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Perry's Index to the Aesopica

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

THE FOX AND THE HARE IN THE WELL

A thirsty hare had gone done into a well to drink the water. He took a good long drink, and when he wanted to get back out again, he found himself trapped with no means of escape. It was a very discouraging situation. A fox then arrived on the scene and when she found the hare she said to him, 'You have made a very serious mistake indeed: you should have first decided on a way to get out and only then gone down into the well!'
This fable indicts people who act impulsively, without thinking things through.

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.


In Perry 408, the story is about a fox making fun of a hare who gets stuck in a well. In Perry 9, the story is more complex: the fox is trapped in the well, gets out with the help of a foolish goat, and the fox then makes fun of the goat trapped in the well.

Perry 408: Gibbs (Oxford) 444 [English]
Perry 408: Syntipas 10 [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.