Perry's Index to the Aesopica
Fables exist in many versions; here is one version in English:
THE MAN BITTEN BY THE DOG
A man who had just been badly bitten by a dog was looking for someone who could
heal his wound. He ran into someone who told him, 'Here is what you need to
do: let the blood from your wound drip onto a piece of bread and then feed the
bread to the dog who bit you. If you do that, your wound will be cured.' The
man who had been bitten by the dog replied, 'But if I do that, every single
dog in the city will want to bite me!'
This fable shows that if someone respects and honours a wicked man, the
wicked man will not return the favour, since his only friends are other wicked
men like himself. |
 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 64: Gibbs (Oxford) 173 [English]
Perry 64: L'Estrange 92 [English]
Perry 64: Townsend 88 [English]
Perry 64: Chambry 177 [Greek]
Perry 64: Syntipas 56 [Greek]
Perry 64: Phaedrus 2.3 [Latin]
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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