Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 2.djvu/466

454

This story is told by Seneca of Cneius Piso. De Ira. lib. i. c. 8., and it is found in Chaucer's, who mentions the same authority.

The following apologue from the Latin Æsop, is probably from the "Gesta Romanorum," the former being collected in the early part of the fifteenth century.

"He that applies himself to do other men harm, ought not to think himself secure; wherefore Æsop rehearseth this fable. There was a serpent which came into the house of a poor man, and lived of that which fell from the poor man's table, for the which thing there happened great fortune to this man, and