The Complete Fables Page 6

  There was a man who had a grudge against a fox, for the fox had caused him some damage. He managed to seize it, and in order to take his full revenge, he tied a rope which had been dipped in oil to his tail. He set fire to the rope and let him go. But, prompted by some god, the fox ran into the man’s fields and set fire to all of his crops, as it was harvest time. The man ran after him helplessly, lamenting his lost crops.

  One must be lenient and not allow oneself to be carried away uncontrollably, for it often happens that people easily angered cause even greater harm to themselves than to those they wish to injure and increase the problems they had already.

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  The Man and the Lion Travelling Together

  A man and a lion were travelling along together one day when they began to argue about which of them was the stronger. Just then they passed a stone statue representing a man strangling a lion.

  ‘There, you see, we are stronger than you,’ said the man, pointing it out to the lion.

  But the lion smiled and replied:

  ‘If lions could make statues, you would see plenty of men under the paws of lions.’

  Many people boast of how brave and fearless they are, but when put to the test are exposed as frauds.

  60

  The Man and the Satyr

  It is said that once a man entered into a friendship with a satyr. Winter had come and the cold weather with it, so the man raised his hands to his mouth and blew upon them. The satyr asked him why he did that. The man replied that he was warming his hands because of the cold.

  Then they were served a meal. As the food was very hot, the man took it in small portions, raised them to his mouth, and blew on them. The satyr again asked him why he acted thus. The man replied that it cooled his meal because it was too hot.

  ‘Oh well, friend,’ said the satyr, ‘I give up on your friendship, because you blow hot and cold with the same mouth.’

  We conclude that we should shun friendship with those whose character is ambiguous.

  61

  The Man Who Shattered a Statue of a God

  A man had a wooden statue of a god, and he beseeched it to do something to help him in his poverty. But his misery only increased and his poverty became worse, so that he became angry with the statue and, taking the god by the leg, he smashed it against the wall. The head of the god, suddenly broken open, poured forth a hoard of gold. The man scooped it up and cried out:

  ‘You have a very contrary spirit! You are very ungrateful! For when I honoured you, you didn’t help me at all, but now that I have smashed you to pieces, you respond by showering me with gifts.’

  This fable shows that one gains nothing by respecting a bad man, and one gets more out of him by striking him.

  62

  The Man Who Found a Golden Lion

  A timorous miser came across the statue of a lion made of pure gold, but did not dare to take it. He said:

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear! I don’t know what will come of this strange bit of luck! I’m absolutely terrified. I’m torn between my love of riches and my cowardly nature. For is this sheer chance? Surely some god or spirit has made this golden lion and left it here for me to find? I’m torn in two. I love the gold but fear the image of the gold. Desire says, ‘‘Take it!’’…but my fearful nature says: ‘‘Hold back!’’ Oh, fickle Fortune! You offer yourself but at the same time do not allow yourself to be taken. Oh golden treasure which gives no pleasure! Oh favour of a god which becomes a curse! And what if I took it? How would I use it? What on earth can I do? I know! I am going to go and fetch my servants and let them take this golden lion. I will watch from a safe distance while they do it.’

  This story relates to rich men who don’t dare either to touch their treasures or to put them to use.

  63

  The Bear and the Fox

  A bear once boasted to a fox that he had a great love for mankind, since he made it a point never to eat a corpse.

  The fox replied:

  ‘I wish to heaven you would mangle the dead rather than the living!’

  This fable unmasks the covetous who live in hypocrisy and vainglory.

  64

  The Ploughman and the Wolf

  There was a ploughman who had just unharnessed his team of oxen and was leading them to the drinking-trough. Just then, a famished wolf who had been searching for food came across the plough and began straight away to lick the inner surfaces of the yoke, savouring the taste of oxen. Bit by bit, without his noticing, the wolf’s neck went down into the yoke and got stuck there. Unable to free himself, the wolf dragged the plough into the furrow.

  The ploughman returned and discovered the wolf caught in the plough. He said to him:

  ‘Ah! You scoundrel-head, you! If only you would give up pillage and robbery and put yourself to work on the land!’

  The wicked are not credible characters, and they really ought to do something useful once in a while.

  65

  The Astronomer

  An astronomer was in the habit of going out every evening to look at the stars. Then, one night when he was in the suburbs absorbed in contemplating the sky, he accidentally fell into a well. A passer-by heard him moaning and calling out. When the man realized what had happened, he called down to him:

  ‘Hey, you there! You are so keen to see what is up in the sky that you don’t see what is down here on the ground!’

  One could apply this fable to men who boast of doing wonders and who are incapable of carrying out the everyday things of life.

  66

  The Frogs Who Demanded a King

  The frogs, annoyed with the anarchy in which they lived, sent a deputation to Zeus to ask him to give them a king. Zeus, seeing that they were but very simple creatures, threw a piece of wood into their marsh. The frogs were so alarmed by the sudden noise that they plunged into the depths of the bog. But when the piece of wood did not move, they clambered out again. They developed such a contempt for this new king that they jumped on his back and crouched there.

  The frogs were deeply ashamed at having such a king, so they sent a second deputation to Zeus asking him to change their monarch. For the first was too passive and did nothing.

  Zeus now became impatient with them and sent down a water-serpent [hydra] which seized them and ate them all up.

  This fable teaches us that it is better to be ruled by passive, worthless men who bear no spitefulness than by productive but wicked ones.

  NOTE: The hydra was actually a mythical creature as well as a water-serpent. The Lernaean Hydra of myth grew two heads for every one that was cut off. In this fable, an actual water-snake is not intended; the hearer of the fable is meant to imagine a monstrous bogey-hydra. Once again, the fable is intended as a joke. An encounter between a frog and a bogey-hydra occurs also in the epic parody Battle of the Frogs and Mice (82), attributed to Homer and published in Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns and Homerica, trans. Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Loeb Library Vol. 57, 1914, pp. 541–63, but probably written by Pigres of Caria circa 480 BC; see footnote to 244.

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  The Neighbour Frogs

  Two frogs were neighbours. One lived in a deep pond far from the track, while the other lived in a small, stagnant pool on the track. The one from the pond advised the other to come and live near her:

  ‘You’ll enjoy a much safer and better life here,’ she said.

  But the frog on the track would not be persuaded.

  ‘Oh, it would be far too great an effort to uproot myself from the place that I know so well and which I have always called home,’ she said.

  And so it was that one day a chariot passed along the track and crushed her.

  Thus it is with men: those who practise the lowest of trades die before turning to more honourable employment.

  68

  The Frogs in the Pond

  There were once two frogs who lived in a pond. But, as it was a hot summer, the pond dried up and they went off to look for another one. In the course
of their search they came across a very deep well. Upon seeing this, one of them said to the other:

  ‘Friend, let’s go down this well together.’

  The other replied:

  ‘But if the water in the well also dries up, how will we be able to get back up again?’

  This fable shows that one ought not to undertake one’s business too lightly.

  69

  The Frog Doctor and the Fox

  One day, a frog in a marsh cried out to all the animals:

  ‘I am a doctor and I know all the remedies!’

  A fox, hearing this, called back:

  ‘How could you save others when you can’t even cure your own limp?’

  This fable shows that if one isn’t initiated into a science one ought not to instruct others.

  70

  The Oxen and the Axle

  Some oxen were pulling a cart. As the axle creaked, they turned round and said to it:

  ‘Hey, friend! We are the ones who carry all the burden and yet it is you who moans!’

  Thus, one sees people who make out that they are exhausted, when it is others who have gone to the trouble.

  71

  The Three Oxen and the Lion

  There were three oxen who always grazed together. A lion had his designs upon them and wanted to eat them, but he could never get at one of them because they were always together. So he set them against each other with slanderous talk and managed to get them separated, whereupon they were isolated and he was able to eat them one after the other.

  If you really want to live in safety, keep close to your friends, retain your confidence in them and challenge your enemies.

  NOTE: There was another version of this fable involving only two bulls, and in which the starving lion seeks the aid of a fox, who ‘by crafty deceit sowed discord between the bulls so that they parted company, and thereafter the lion made easy prey of each bull separately’. This is the version preserved by the rhetorician Themistius (fourth century AD) and which is actually probably the original form of the fable. Related to the Themistian version of the fable is the frame-story of the ‘Estrangement of Friends’ section of the Indian Pañcatantra, where a friendship between a lion and a bull is broken up by a jackal (the Indian substitute for the fox). No one has ever worked out satisfactorily whether the Greeks borrowed fables from India or the Indians borrowed them from the Greeks after the time of Alexander the Great’s invasion of north-west India. The Indian versions are always immensely elaborate and long-winded, whereas the Greek versions are generally short and simple. This probably points to a transmission eastwards, such that the simple fables became elaborated, which is generally how things happen, rather than the other way around.

  72

  The Ox-driver and Herakles

  An ox-driver was bringing a wagon towards a town. The wagon fell down into a deep ravine. But instead of doing anything to get it out, the ox-driver stood without doing a thing, and merely invoked Herakles among all the gods whom he particularly honoured. Herakles appeared to him and said:

  ‘Put your hand to the wheels, goad the oxen, and do not invoke the gods without making some effort yourself. Otherwise you will invoke them in vain.’

  73

  The North Wind and the Sun

  The North Wind [Boreas] and the Sun had a contest of strength. They decided to allot the palm of victory to whichever of them could strip the clothes off a traveller.

  The North Wind tried first. He blew violently. As the man clung on to his clothes, the North Wind attacked him with greater force. But the man, uncomfortable from the cold, put on more clothes. So, disheartened, the North Wind left him to the Sun.

  The Sun now shone moderately, and the man removed his extra cloak [himation]. Then the Sun darted beams which were more scorching until the man, not being able to withstand the heat, took off his clothes and went to take a dip in a nearby river.

  This fable shows that persuasion is often more effective than violence.

  NOTE: This fable was cleverly utilized by the playwright Sophocles, according to Hieronymus of Rhodes in his lost work, Historical Notes, where he related a picaresque story of Sophocles seducing a young boy outside the city wall of Athens. They wrapped themselves in Sophocles’s cape while they pursued their physical delights, and when they had consummated their act, the boy ran off with the playwright’s cape, leaving him his own boyish cloak. This story led to the ridicule of Sophocles by the townsmen, and his rival Euripides boasted that he had consorted with the same boy without having to pay any such price. Sophocles then used the fable to form an epigram, claiming that it was the Sun God, and not the boy, who had stripped him of his cape, whereas the North Wind blew when Euripides seduced another man’s wife. See Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae (xiii, 604).

  74

  The Cowherd and the Lion

  A cowherd who was pasturing a herd of cattle lost a calf. He looked everywhere for it in the vicinity, but could not find it. So he made a vow to Zeus that if he ever managed to discover the thief, he would sacrifice a kid to the god in thanks.

  Shortly after making this vow, he went into a wood where he saw a lion eating the lost calf. Terror-stricken, he raised his hands to the sky, crying out:

  ‘Oh great Lord Zeus, a short time ago I made a vow to sacrifice a kid to you if I found the thief. But now I will sacrifice a bull if only I can escape from the thief’s claws!’

  One could apply this fable to those who are exposed to disgrace: in their difficulty, they desire to find a remedy, but once they’ve found it, they seek to evade their commitments.

  75

  The Linnet and the Bat

  A linnet in a cage, hooked to an open window, sang during the night. A bat heard his voice from a distance and, coming near, asked him for what reason he chose to keep quiet by day and sing only at night.

  The linnet said:

  ‘I am not without motive. I make use of the night to do my singing because it was by singing during the day that I was caught. So since then I have grown wiser.’

  The bat replied:

  ‘It’s a bit late now to be so much on your guard. It seems pointless. You should have thought of that before you were caught.’

  This fable shows that when misfortune has come, regrets are useless.

  NOTE: The Greek name for this bird in the cage is otherwise unknown in the whole of Greek literature – bōtalis. Liddell and Scott originally listed it in their Lexicon as boutalis, giving only the Aesop reference, and unhelpfully calling it ‘a kind of nocturnal singing-bird’, which, if they had read the fable, they would know was precisely the opposite of what it was! In the 1996 edition of the Lexicon, the nocturnal singing has been deleted, and we have no translation given at all, only the reference Aesop. 85’. Akanthis is given as either a goldfinch or a linnet, with the reference of 616b31 in Aristotle’s History of Animals (which says the colouring of the akanthis is poor (i.e. dull), clearly ruling out both goldfinches and linnets) but unaware of the reference 592b30 which made the linnet an impossible choice (see below). At 593a1 Aristotle calls the goldfinch a chyrsomētris, a translation accepted by Liddell and Scott, so that the Lexicon contradicts itself. Professor Chambry translates bōtalis as serin, ‘canary’, but adds a footnote saying that, as the word is otherwise unknown, that is only his guess. However, the canary is only a winter visitor to Greece and was much less common as a caged singing-bird than the linnet, which was the standard bird in Greece for this purpose and had the advantage that it sang throughout the year, which canaries do not.

  The Greek terminology of the small birds was vague, and the name for the linnet is not really established by scholars. It has been suggested that it was the akanthis, but this cannot be so since Aristotle specifically states that the akanthis ate no insects (History of Animals, trans. David M. Balme, Harvard University Press, 1991, Loeb Library Vol. 439 (592b3o)), whereas linnets do. There seems little doubt that the bōtalis is the bird called by Aristotle the batis. The word batis
may be a contraction of bōtalis. Liddell and Scott list batis as ‘a bird that frequents bushes, perhaps the stonechat’, and give the single Aristotle reference (History of Animals (592b18)). The word batis, being otherwise unknown, is wisely left untranslated by David Balme in the Loeb Library History of Animals. However, it is described as a grub-eater (as linnets are, though they also eat copious seeds), along with four other birds, all of which are translated and identified.

  Since Aristotle does not otherwise mention the linnet by any other name, and since there is an unidentified bird of its habits in his descriptions named batis, and since it is unthinkable that Aristotle would have omitted mention of the linnet in his thorough survey of birds, it seems reasonable to conclude that the batis is the linnet, by a process of elimination, and that bōtalis and boutalis are forms of the same name. If doubts are entertained about the linguistic possibilities of batis being a contraction of the longer word, we could always invoke a scribal error and suggest that batis in the Aristotle text is actually a misreading. It could even be balios, which means ‘swift’. But such linguistic speculations are really unnecessary, since a linnet seems to answer the requirements of both the Aristotle passage and the Aesop fable, and there is, in any case, no other certain name for the linnet in Greek so it might as well be this one.

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  The House-ferret and Aphrodite