Aesop's Fables (24 page)

T
he pigeons in a certain dovecote were persecuted by a kite,
¹²
who every now and then swooped down and carried off one of their number. So they invited a hawk into the dovecote to defend them against their enemy. But they soon repented of their folly; for the hawk killed more of them in a day than the kite had done in a year.

A
woman who had lately lost her husband used to go every day to his grave and lament her loss. A farmer, who was engaged in plowing not far from the spot, set eyes upon the woman and desired to have her for his wife. So he left his plow and came and sat by her side and began to shed tears himself. She asked him why he wept; and he replied, “I have lately lost my wife, who was very dear to me, and tears ease my grief.” “And I,” said she, “have lost my husband.” And so for a while they mourned in silence. Then he said, “Since you and I are in like case, shall we not do well to marry and live together? I shall take the place of your dead husband, and you, that of my dead wife.” The woman consented to the plan, which indeed seemed reasonable enough, and they dried their tears. Meanwhile, a thief had come, and stolen the oxen which the farmer had left with his plow. On discovering the theft, he beat his breast and loudly bewailed his loss. When the woman heard his cries, she came and said, “Why, are you weeping still?” To which he replied, “Yes, and I mean it this time.”

A
t the bidding of Jupiter, Prometheus set about the creation of man and the other animals. Jupiter, seeing that mankind, the only rational creatures, were far outnumbered by the irrational beasts, bade him redress the balance by turning some of the latter into men. Prometheus did as he was bidden, and this is the reason why some people have the forms of men but the souls of beasts.

A
swallow was once boasting to a crow about her birth. “I was once a princess,” said she, “the daughter of a king of Athens, but my husband used me cruelly, and cut out my tongue for a slight fault. Then, to protect me from further injury, I was turned by Juno into a bird.” “You chatter quite enough as it is,” said the crow. “What you would have been like if you hadn’t lost your tongue, I can’t think.”

A
hunter went out after game, and succeeded in catching a hare, which he was carrying home with him when he met a man on horseback, who said to him, “You have had some sport I see, sir,” and offered to buy it. The hunter readily agreed; but the horseman had no sooner got the hare in his hands than he set spurs to his horse and went off at full gallop. The hunter ran after him for some little distance. But it soon dawned upon him that he had been tricked, and he gave up trying to overtake the horseman, and, to save his face, called after him as loud as he could, “All right, sir, all right. Take your hare. It was meant all along as a present.”

A
goatherd was tending his goats out at pasture when he saw a number of wild goats approach and mingle with his flock. At the end of the day he drove them home and put them all into the pen together. Next day the weather was so bad that he could not take them out as usual, so he kept them at home in the pen and fed them there. He only gave his own goats enough food to keep them from starving, but he gave the wild goats as much as they could eat and more; for he was very anxious for them to stay, and he thought that if he fed them well they wouldn’t want to leave him.

When the weather improved he took them all out to pasture again, but no sooner had they got near the hills than the wild goats broke away from the flock and scampered off. The goatherd was very much disgusted at this, and roundly abused them for their ingratitude. “Rascals!” he cried. “To run away like that after the way I’ve treated you!” Hearing this, one of them turned round and said, “Oh, yes, you treated us all right—too well, in fact. It was just that that put us on our guard. If you treat newcomers like ourselves so much better than your own flock, it’s more than likely that, if another lot of strange goats joined yours, we should then be neglected in favor of the last comers.”

A
swallow, conversing with a nightingale, advised her to quit the leafy coverts where she made her home, and to come . and live with men, like herself, and nest under the shelter of their roofs. But the nightingale replied, “Time was when I too, like yourself, lived among men. But the memory of the cruel wrongs I then suffered makes them hateful to me, and never again will I approach their dwellings.”

 

The scene of past sufferings revives painful memories.

A
traveler, exhausted with fatigue after a long journey, sank down at the very brink of a deep well and presently fell A asleep. He was within an ace of falling in, when Lady Fortune appeared to him and touched him on the shoulder, cautioning him to move farther away. “Wake up, good sir, I pray you,” she said. “Had you fallen into the well, the blame would have been thrown not on your own folly but on me, Fortune.”

GLOSSARY OF NAMES AND TERMS
FROM CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY

Aesop.
For an account of Aesop’s legendary life, see the early pages of this volume and the Introduction.

Apollo.
One of the most highly revered and respected of all the Greek gods, he presided over many aspects of life and culture, including law, religion, poetry, and music. He is often depicted playing the lyre. The most important center for Apollo worship in ancient Greece was at Delphi, where he often revealed the future through his oracle.

Athens.
The principal city of Attica, it was the center of ancient Greek civilization.

Attica.
In this ancient district in east central Greece, Athens was the principal city.

Death.
Cultural anthropologists have long noted that primitive peoples rarely have the ability to accept death as a natural and inevitable phenomenon. Thus the origin of death is described in myths from around the world, and personifications of death (for example, the Grim Reaper or the Angel of Death) are part of folk beliefs in many cultures. The character named Death in fable no. 261 is such a personification, a supernatural being who causes humans to die. However, his verdicts apparently are not necessarily final. This story, like many other folktales from around the world, shows an intended victim bargaining with his would-be captor with at least the hope of reprieve, but given the often cynical tone of Aesop’s fables, most readers will not give him good chances of success.

Delphi.
This city in ancient Greece was located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. An important cultural center, Delphi was especially renowned as the location of the Oracle of Apollo.

Demades.
An Athenian diplomat famous for his oratory skills, Demades lived between about 380 B.C. and 319 B.C.

Demeter.
The name of this Greek goddess of agriculture can mean either “grain mother” or “mother earth.” Her Roman equivalent was Ceres.

Earth, Goddess of the.
The ancient Greeks worshiped a female personification of the earth whom they named Gaea. This Mother Earth figure is sometimes depicted as an adversary of Zeus, leading to the conjecture that in prehistoric times her cult was replaced by a religion centered around Zeus.

Fortune, Lady.
According to ancient Greek belief, human destiny (especially the length of one’s life and one’s allotment of happiness and misery) was determined by three goddesses called fates. The Lady Fortune in fable no. 284 (also the Fortune of fable no. 56) may be one of these fates, or possibly an embodiment of all three. In Roman mythology the roles of the Greek fates were played by the Parcae (singular, Parca), whose names were Nona, Decuma, and Morta.

Gods and mortals.
The morality of Aesop’s fables is secular and pragmatic, and is rarely tied to religion, although the gods themselves, as well as other mythical beings, often play roles. These stories are, for the most part, of Greek origin, but they have come to us through the intermediacy of the Romans, so in the fables mythical beings are usually identified by their Roman names.

Grief.
Although Grief is identified as a god in fable no. 276, no such specific deity is mentioned in most descriptions of Greek and Roman religion. This Aesopic fable is personifying the concept of grief into a supernatural being in much the same way that the concept of death is often personified.

Hercules.
This is the Roman name of Heracles, the most famous of all Greek legendary heroes. Enormously strong and fiercely brave, Hercules was nevertheless forced into servitude and was able to free himself only by performing twelve labors. These tasks consisted for the most part in subduing terrifying mythical monsters, but one of them was the humiliating chore of cleaning dung from the stables of King Augeas, which he succeeded in doing by diverting two rivers and flooding the stables.

HYmettus.
(Imittós), In ancient times this mountain in Greece, southeast of Athens, was famous for its aromatic herbs and for the unusually flavored honey that they produced.

Juno.
She was the female counterpart of Jupiter (Jove), the principal deity in Roman religion. Her Greek counterpart was Hera.

Jupiter.
(Also known as Jove), Jupiter was the Sky-God and the principal deity in pre-Christian Roman religion. In most Latin-rooted languages his name is still attached to the fifth day of the week—for example,
Jovis dies
(Latin), jeudi (French), and
jueves
(Spanish). Jupiter’s counterpart in Greek mythology was Zeus.

Mercury.
The Roman god of merchants, Mercury is identified with the Greek deity Hermes, who, according to Homer, served as the gods’ messenger. Because of this association, Mercury is often portrayed with a winged helmet or winged sandals. In most Latin-rooted languages his name is still attached to the fourth day of the week—for example,
Mercurii dies
(Latin),
mercredi
(French), and
miercoles
(Spanish).

Minerva.
In Roman mythology, Minerva presided over the arts and crafts and their associated skills. Because these skills could also be used in battle, she also came to be recognized as a goddess of warfare, making her a counterpart to the Greek goddess Athena.

Olympus.
A snow-capped peak of nearly 10,000 feet in northern Greece, Mount Olympus was held to be the home of the gods by the ancient Greeks.

Oracle at Delphi.
The word “oracle” can designate either an intermediary (such as a priestess) who communicates messages from a deity, the place (for example, a temple) where these revelations are received, or the divine message itself: The most important divination center in ancient Greece was the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, a city located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus.

Plutus.
The Greek god of wealth, especially agricultural abundance, Plutus is often depicted in art as a boy with a cornucopia.

Prometheus.
The most famous of the Titans, a race of giants that inhabited the earth before humans were created, Prometheus is said to have formed the first humans out of clay and was their principal supporter before the gods. He is best remembered for attempting to benefit humankind by stealing fire from heaven for their use.

Rhodes.
On this easternmost of the Greek islands, just off the coast of Turkey, the capital city is also named Rhodes.

Satyr.
A creature in Greek mythology, a satyr is usually depicted as half man and half horse (or goat). Associated with Dionysus, god of wine and revelry, satyrs are marked by uncouth, licentious behavior. The most famous satyr was the Greek fertility deity Pan, often depicted playing shepherd’s pipes and immortalized in such words as “panic” and “pandemonium.” The Roman counterparts of satyrs were the fauns.

Thebes.
According to tradition, King Oedipus held court at Thebes, one of the principal cities of ancient Greece. It is the setting of many classical tragedies by Aeschylus and Sophocles. The Greek Thebes should not be confused with the ancient Egyptian city of the same name.

Theseus.
A legendary Greek hero and King of Athens, Theseus greatly admired the feats of Heracles (Hercules) and attempted to make a similar name for himself by seeking out contests with a variety of powerful opponents, including the Minotaur, a fabulous beast with the head of a bull and a human’s body. Theseus, identified as the duke of Athens, is featured in two of Shakespeare’s plays,
A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Two Noble Kinsmen.

Venus.
An ancient Roman deity for agriculture, Venus also came to be associated with the Greek goddess of sexuality and love, Aphrodite, at a very early time. In most Latin-rooted languages Venus’s name is still attached to the sixth day of the week—for example,
Veneris
dies (Latin),
vendredi
(French), and
viernes
(Spanish). Venus’s male counterpart was her own son (fathered by Mercury) Cupid, called Amor by Roman poets. Cupid’s Greek counterpart was Eros, the god of love.

The Fox and the Grapes (no. 1), type 59

The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs (no. 2), type 776

The Cat and the Mice (no. 3), type 113
^*

The Mice in Council (no. 6), type 110

The Fox and the Crow (no. 9), type 57

The Wolf and the Lamb (no. 11), type 111A

Mercury and the Woodman (no. 17), type 729

The Lion and the Mouse (no. 19), type 75

The Crow and the Pitcher (no. 20), type 232D
^*