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Perry's Index to the Aesopica

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

THE GOATHERD AND THE WILD GOATS

Snow was falling from the sky. Seeking shelter from the storm, a goatherd drove his goats, all covered with white from the thickly falling snow, into a cave. He had thought the cave was empty, but he soon discovered that there were some wild horned goats who had already taken shelter there. The wild goats were far more numerous that his own goats and they were also bigger and stronger. The goatherd therefore tossed the fodder he had brought from the woods to the wild goats, while he let his own goats go hungry. When the weather cleared, he found that his own goats had died, while the wild goats had already gone away and were tramping their way through the untrodden thickets upon the mountains where animals had not yet grazed. The ridiculous goatherd went back home without any goats at all: hoping for a larger flock he did not even profit from the goats that were his to begin with.

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 6: Gibbs (Oxford) 439 [English]
Perry 6: Townsend 58 [English]
Perry 6: Babrius 45 [Greek]
Perry 6: Chambry 17 [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.