<< Home Page | Perry Index

Perry's Index to the Aesopica

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

THE POOR MAN AND DEATH

A poor man was carrying a load of wood on his shoulders. After a while he was feeling faint, so he sat down by the side of the road. Putting aside his burden, he bitterly called out to Death, summoning Death with the words 'O Death!' Death immediately showed up and said to the man, 'Why have you summoned me?' The man said, 'Oh, just to have you help me pick this burden up off the ground!'
The fable shows that everyone clings to life, even if they suffer from affliction and oppression.

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 60: Gibbs (Oxford) 484 [English]
Perry 60: Jacobs 69 [English]
Perry 60: L'Estrange 112 [English]
Perry 60: Townsend 85 [English]
Perry 60: Chambry 78 [Greek]
Perry 60: Syntipas 2 [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.