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Perry's Index to the Aesopica

Fables exist in many versions; here is one version in English:

THE HUNTER AND THE HORSEMAN

There was a hunter who had caught a hare and was carrying it home. As he went along his way, he met a man on horseback who asked him for the hare, pretending that he wanted to buy it. As soon as he got the hare from the hunter, the horseman immediately took off at a gallop. The hunter began to pursue the horseman thinking that he might catch up with him. When the horseman finally disappeared into the distance, the hunter reluctantly said, 'Go ahead then! That hare is my gift to you.'
This fable shows that people who involuntarily have their property taken from them often pretend that they made a gift of it voluntarily.

Source: Aesop's Fables. A new translation by Laura Gibbs. Oxford University Press (World's Classics): Oxford, 2002.
NOTE: New cover, with new ISBN, published in 2008; contents of book unchanged.


Perry 402: Gibbs (Oxford) 257 [English]
Perry 402: Townsend 278 [English]
Perry 402: Syntipas 49 [Greek]


You can find a compilation of Perry's index to the Aesopica in the gigantic appendix to his edition of Babrius and Phaedrus for the Loeb Classical Library (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1965). This book is an absolute must for anyone interested in the Aesopic fable tradition. Invaluable.