The Complete Fables Read online

  Above all, care has been taken regarding the identities of the species of animals and plants, which no modern scholar known to us has translated correctly. We have also checked the botanical and zoological issues against Aristotle, Theophrastus and other authorities. We have included some key Greek terms in square brackets when we thought that such elucidations would be useful or necessary, such as, for instance, making clear when we translated ‘Nature’ that the Greek word concerned was indeed physis. Notes necessary for clarification are given at the end of the fable.

  1

  The Good Things and the Bad Things

  The things brought by ill fortune, taking advantage of the feebleness of those brought by good fortune, pursued them closely. They went up to heaven and there asked Zeus to tell them how they should behave with regard to men. Zeus told them that they should present themselves to men not all together but only one at a time. And that is why the bad things, living near to men, assail them constantly, while the good things, who have to come down from the sky, only arrive at long intervals.

  Thus we see how good fortune never reaches us quickly, while bad fortune strikes us every day.

  NOTE: Zeus was King of the Gods to the Greeks, equivalent to Jupiter, or Jove, to the Romans. His name will recur frequently throughout the fables, and in particular as the ultimate authority towards whom various plants and animals turn to settle their disputes, in his role as chief arbiter of all that happens in heaven and on earth. It should be remembered that in many cases these appeals to Zeus are intended as a joke, as is true of this fable for instance. A very large proportion of the fables, perhaps more than half, are formulated as jokes, and nothing was thought quite so funny as some lowly or pathetic group of creatures ‘appealing to Zeus’.

  2

  The Man Selling a Holy Statue

  A man carved a wooden statue of the god Hermes and carried it to the market to offer it for sale. But no buyer came along. So the man took it into his head to attract a buyer by crying out that he was selling a god who would provide both goods and profits. A passer-by heard this and said to him:

  ‘Ha! Well, friend, if he is so beneficent, why are you selling him instead of making use of his help yourself ?’

  The merchant replied:

  ‘Oh, it isn’t that. It’s just that I need ready cash and the god is never in a hurry to render his services.’

  This fable relates to base, self-seeking men who are not sustained by the gods.

  3

  The Eagle and the Fox

  An eagle and a fox, having become friends, decided to live near one another and be neighbours. They believed that this proximity would strengthen their friendship. So the eagle flew up and established herself on a very high branch of a tree, where she made her nest. And the fox, creeping about among the bushes which were at the foot of the same tree, made her den there, depositing her babies right beneath the eagle.

  But, one day when the fox was out looking for food, the eagle, who was very short of food too, swooped down to the bushes and took the fox cubs up to her nest and feasted on them with her own young.

  When the fox returned, she was less distressed at the death of her little ones than she was driven mad by frustration at the impossibility of ever effectively avenging herself. For she, a land animal [chersaia], could never hope to pursue a winged bird. She had no option but to content herself, in her powerlessness and feebleness, with cursing her enemy from afar.

  Now it was not long afterwards that the eagle did actually receive her punishment for her crime against her friend.

  Some men were sacrificing a goat in the countryside and the eagle swooped down on the altar, carrying off some burning entrails, which she took up to her nest. A strong wind arose which blew the fire from the burning entrails into some old straw that was in the nest. The eaglets were singed and, as they were not yet able to fly, when they leaped from the nest they fell to the ground. The fox rushed up and devoured them all in front of the eagle’s eyes.

  This story shows that if you betray friendship, you may evade the vengeance of those whom you wrong if they are weak, but ultimately you cannot escape the vengeance of heaven.

  NOTE: This fable is told in verse by the poet Archilochus (eighth or seventh century BC) and also referred to by Aristophanes in 414 BC in The Birds (651), where it is attributed to Aesop.

  4

  The Eagle and the Scarab Beetle

  An eagle was once pursuing a hare. This hare, seeing his position was hopeless, turned to the only creature whom fate offered for help: it was a scarab beetle. The hare begged the beetle to save him. The scarab beetle reassured him, and upon the eagle’s approach the beetle beseeched him not to carry off the hare. But the eagle, disdaining his small size and insignificance, devoured the hare as the beetle looked on.

  From that time, the scarab beetle, full of malice, never ceases to search out the places where the eagle builds her nest. And when the eggs are laid, the beetle gets into the nest, hoists himself up and rolls the eggs out of the nest so that they fall and break.

  The eagle is consecrated to Zeus, and so the eagle appealed to Zeus to find her a safe sanctuary where she could raise her young. Zeus allowed her to lay her eggs in his lap. But the scarab beetle saw through this trick. He made a pellet of dung, took flight, and when he got above the lap of Zeus he let it fall. Zeus stood up to shake off the dung pellet, and the eggs were thrown to the ground without his thinking.

  Since that time, it is said, eagles no longer nest during the season when the scarab beetles appear.

  The fable teaches one not to despise anyone. One must say to oneself that there is no being so feeble that he is not capable one day of avenging an insult.

  NOTE: This fable is a garbled distortion of sacred Egyptian mythology. In Egypt the sacred scarab beetle was envisaged as pushing the rising sun above the horizon, just as the real scarab beetle pushes the round dung pellet containing its own egg. The scarab thus symbolized self-generation. One of the eyes of the sacred hawk, Horus, was also the sun. In this fable the hawk has become an eagle. The rolling of eggs, the dung pellet, the sacred hawk/eagle and the chief of the gods, who has been given the Greek name of Zeus here, are all elements from Egyptian legend which have been jumbled up to make a fable. It is possible that this fable itself comes from Egypt, since there seems little reason for Egyptian religious tradition to form the basis of a native Greek fable. The scarab beetle appears also in Fables 149 and 241.

  This particular fable is supposed, however, to have been told by Aesop to the hostile Delphians who were threatening to throw him from a cliff, according to the Life of Aesop, and also according to the playwright Aristophanes in his comedy The Wasps (1446 ff.). It may be, therefore, that Aesop was an eclectic gatherer of religious lore more interested in a good story than in any kind of accurate understanding of foreign doctrines, and hence the jumble of elements.

  5

  The Eagle, the Jackdaw and the Shepherd

  An eagle, dropping suddenly from a high rock, carried off a lamb. A jackdaw saw this, was smitten by a sense of rivalry and determined to do the same. So, with a great deal of noise, he pounced upon a ram. But his claws merely got caught in the thick ringlets of the ram’s fleece, and no matter how frantically he flapped his wings, he was unable to get free and take flight.

  Finally the shepherd bestirred himself, hurried up to the jackdaw and got hold of him. He clipped the end of his wings and, when evening fell, he carried him back for his children. The children wanted to know what sort of bird this was. So the shepherd replied:

  ‘As far as I can see, it’s a jackdaw, but it would like us to think it’s an eagle!’

  Just so, to compete with the powerful is not only not worth the effort and labour lost, but also brings mockery and calamity upon us.

  6

  The Eagle with Clipped Wings and the Fox

  One day a man caught an eagle. He clipped its wings and released it into his farmyard to live with the poultry. T
he eagle hung his head in sorrow and refused to eat. One would have taken him for an imprisoned king.

  But another man came along and bought the eagle. He lifted up the wing feathers and rubbed the place with myrrh so that they grew again. The eagle soared upwards into the air once more and spotted a hare. He seized the hare in his talons and offered it to the man as a gift.

  A fox had seen all this and said to the eagle:

  ‘You shouldn’t give the hare to him. You should give it to your first master. The second master is naturally good. But you ought to give a present to the first one to deter him from catching you and clipping your wings again.’

  Thus, one should generously repay the favours of one’s benefactors and prudently keep out of the way of wicked people.

  7

  The Eagle Hit by an Arrow

  An eagle had perched on the crest of a craggy rock to scan the ground below for hares. A man shot him with an arrow, which lodged in his flesh. The end of the arrow, feathered with eagle’s feathers, stuck out of him and stared him in the face. Seeing it, he cried out:

  ‘This is the crowning insult, to die because of the danger I myself presented!’

  The pangs of suffering are made more poignant when we are beaten at our own game.

  NOTE: We know from a fragment of the lost play, Myrmidones, by Aeschylus (525–456 BC) that this fable is not by Aesop but is instead one of the ‘Libyan Stories’, a rival collection of ancient fables mentioned by Aristotle, and for discussion of which see the Introduction.

  8

  The Nightingale and the Hawk

  A nightingale, perched on a tall oak, was singing as usual when a hawk saw her. He was very hungry, so he swooped down upon her and seized her. Seeing herself about to die, the nightingale pleaded to the hawk to let her go, saying she was not a sizeable enough meal and would never fill the stomach of a hawk, and that if he were hungry he ought to find some bigger birds. But the hawk replied:

  ‘I would certainly be foolish if I let a meal go which I already have in my talons to run after something else which I haven’t yet seen.’

  Men are foolish who, in hope of greater things, let those which they have in their grasp escape.

  NOTE: A different fable of The Hawk and the Nightingale’ is related by the poet Hesiod (circa 700 BC) in his Works and Days (201–10). In that fable the hawk has seized the nightingale and, as he carries her high up among the clouds, he tells the nightingale she should not cry out or resist his superior might, for: ‘He is a fool who tries to withstand the stronger, for he does not get the mastery and suffers pain besides his shame.’ This old fable clearly antedates the time of Aesop, and perhaps he or another wrote a fable with the same characters because they were familiar. Two points particularly noteworthy about the fable recounted by Hesiod are that it clearly preceded him and that it had a clear moral appended to it, showing that this practice of appending morals to animal fables was very ancient.

  9

  The Nightingale and the Swallow

  The swallow urged the nightingale to take up residence under the roofs of men and live near them, as she herself did.

  The nightingale replied:

  ‘No, thank you. I have no desire to revive the memories of all my past misfortunes.’

  Thus, some people afflicted by a stroke of bad luck wish to avoid the place where the misfortune occurred.

  NOTE: The Greeks ate nightingales whereas they never ate swallows or house-martins; see 349. However, the real point of this fable is a reference to a myth, known by everyone at Athens, about the daughters of the Athenian King Pandion, one of whom changed into a nightingale and the other into a swallow; see the note to 350, which deals with the same story. The Greeks used the same word for house-martins and swallows, which were not distinguished in terminology, so that one must decide which is referred to by the context. In this case, the mythological reference is decisive.

  10

  The Athenian Debtor

  In Athens, a debtor summoned by his creditor to repay his debt begged for more time because things were very difficult for him. Not being able to persuade his creditor, he led a sow, the only one he owned, and offered it for sale in front of him. A buyer came along and asked if the sow were fertile.

  ‘Oh yes, she’s fertile,’ replied the debtor, ‘extraordinarily so. During the time of the Eleusinian Mysteries she gives birth to females, and during the Panathēnaiac Festival she gives birth to males.’

  The buyer was stunned on hearing this. The creditor added sarcastically:

  ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if I were you. Why, it’s quite clear that this sow would also doubtless give birth to baby goats for the god Dionysius.’

  This fable shows that people do not hesitate to pledge the impossible when they are desperate.

  11

  The Ethiopian

  A man who bought an Ethiopian slave presumed that his [black] colour was due to neglect by his former owner. Taking him home, he set to work scrubbing him down with soap. He tried every method of washing which he knew, to try and whiten him. But he could not alter his colour. Indeed, he made himself ill with his exertions.

  This fable shows that the nature of something is seen straightaway.

  NOTE: The original version of this fable featured not an Ethiopian but an Indian. The older version is referred to by the satirist Lucian, for instance, who, in his Epigram 19, asks: ‘Why do you wash in vain your Indian body?… You cannot shed sunlight on the dark night.’ (See the Loeb Library Greek Anthology (428).) Themistius, in Oration 23, doubtless drawing upon the collection of Demetrius of Phalerum (see Introduction), also calls the man an Indian, as do several others, but the later writer of fables, Aphthonius, changes him to an Ethiopian. Thus do the fables mutate as they migrate from one writer to another.

  12

  The Cat and the Cock

  A cat who had caught a cock wanted to give a plausible reason for devouring it. So she accused it of annoying people by crowing at night and disturbing their sleep.

  The cock defended himself by saying that he did it to be helpful. For, if he woke people up, it was to summon them to their accustomed work.

  Then the cat produced another grievance and accused the cock of insulting Nature by his relationship with his mother and sisters.

  The cock replied that in this also he was serving his master’s interests, since it was thanks to this that the chickens laid lots of eggs.

  ‘Ah well!’ cried the cat, ‘I’m not going to go without food just because you can produce a lot of justifications!’ And she ate the cock.

  This fable shows that someone with a wicked nature who is determined to do wrong, when he cannot do so in the guise of a good man, does his evil deeds openly.

  13

  The Cat and the Mice

  A house was infested with mice. A cat discovered this, went there and caught them one after the other and ate them. The mice, seeing themselves continually being caught, were forced back to their holes. Not wanting to wait endlessly for them to come out, the cat thought of a ruse to tempt them out. He climbed up on to a wooden peg and hung there, pretending to be dead. But one of the mice, poking his head out to have a look around, saw him and said:

  ‘Hey, friend! Even if you’re going to hang there pretending to be a sack, I’m certainly not going to come near you!’

  This fable shows that sensible men, when they have put to the test the wickedness of certain people, are no longer taken in by their falseness.

  14

  The Cat and the Hens

  A cat, learning that there were some sick chickens in a small farm, disguised himself as a doctor and, taking with him the tools of the trade, called on them. Arriving at the farm, he asked the chickens how they were.

  ‘Fine,’ they replied, ‘as long as you get out of here.’

  It is thus that sensible people are wise to the tricks of the wicked, despite all of their pretence at honesty.

  15

  The Goat and the
Goatherd

  One day, a goatherd was calling his goats back to their fold, but one of them loitered behind on some juicy pasture. The goatherd threw a stone at her, but he aimed so well that he broke a horn. Then he began to plead with the goat not to tell his master. But the goat replied:

  ‘What’s the use of keeping quiet about it? How can I hide it? It’s there for all eyes to see, that my horn is broken.’

  When the fault is evident it is impossible to conceal it.

  16

  The Goat and the Donkey

  A man kept a goat and a donkey. The goat became jealous of the donkey, because it was so well fed. So she said to him:

  ‘What with turning the millstone and all the burdens you carry, your life is just a torment without end.’

  She advised him to pretend to have epilepsy and to fall into a hole in order to get some rest. The donkey followed her advice, fell down and was badly bruised all over. His master went to get the vet and asked him for a remedy for these injuries. The vet prescribed an infusion of goat’s lung; this remedy would surely restore him to health. As a result, the man sacrificed the goat to cure the donkey.

  Whosoever schemes against others owes his own misfortune to himself.

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