No Perry Numbers
Fables listed here without Perry numbers fall into two categories:
- Ancient fables. There are a very few ancient fables
which Perry did not included in his inventory of the Aesopica.
- Medieval fables. For the most part, fables here without
Perry numbers belong to the medieval Aesopic output. Given that there
are serious problems with Perry's medieval catalog,
I have not attempted to be systematic in identifying the Perry number
for medieval sources. So, if you see a medieval fable that is cited
without a Perry number, this could simply mean that the fable does not
have an extant ancient prototype. It may in fact have a Perry number
in the range 584-725.
- Renaissance fables. In addition, Perry's index does
not include the fables of Abstemius, a collection of 100 fables which
enjoyed considerable popularity and which are found repeated in many
later Renaissance and early modern collections of fables, both Latin
and English.
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.
|
