Page:The Fables of Æsop (Jacobs).djvu/236

206 proverb about the ostrich: "They said to the camel-bird, 'Fly'; it said, 'I am a beast': they said, 'Carry'; it said, 'I am a bird.'"

Phædrus, i. 12. Possibly Eastern. It has recently been collected in Madagascar. (Ferrand. Contes Malgaches, xvi.)

Phædrus, iv. 8. Told in the Arabic fables of Lôqman of a cat. Quoted by Stevenson, Master of Ballantrae.

Medieval prose Phædrus. Indian. Found also in Talmud, Sanhedrim, 39b.

Phædrus, iii. 7. Told in Avian, 37, and Benedict of Oxford, of a lion and a dog.

Medieval prose Æsop. Occurs also in Plutarch, Coriol. vi. (cf. North's Plutarch, ed. Skeat, p. 6. Also North's Bidpai, ed. Jacobs, p. 64). It is said to have been told by Menenius Agrippa to prevent the Plebeians seceding from the Patricians in the early days of Rome (Livy, I. xxx. 3). The second scene of Shakespeare's Coriolanus is mainly devoted to this fable. Similar fables occur in the