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.
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