Perry's Index to the Aesopica
Fables exist in many versions; here is one version in English:
THE BOY AND THE TRIPE
A crowd of country folk had sacrificed a bull to the goddess Demeter, scattering
leaves over the wide threshing-floor, while the tables were covered with platters
of meat and jars brimming with wine. There was a boy who ate greedily and stuffed
himself full with beef tripe. On the way home, he was seized by a stomach ache.
Collapsing into his mother's tender embrace, he vomited, and said, 'Woe is me,
I'm going to die! Mother, all my guts are falling out!' The mother replied,
'Be brave and throw it all up; don't hold anything back. Those are not your
own guts you are vomiting: they are the bull's!' |
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 47: Gibbs (Oxford) 539 [English]
Perry 47: Babrius 34 [Greek]
Perry 47: Chambry 292 [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.
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