Page:The Fables of Æsop (Jacobs).djvu/247

Rh

Babrius 98. Used by Eumenes to warn the Macedonians against the wiles of Antigonus (Diod. Sicul. xix. 25). La Fontaine, iv. 1. L'Estrange, 121.

Babrius 47. A similar apologue is told of Ghenghiz Khan, and occurs in Harkon's Armenian History of the Tartars. Plutarch tells it of a king of Scythia (Apophth. 84, 16). Cf. Eccl. iv. 12. L'Estrange, 62. La Fontaine, iv. 17.

Referred to by Plato, Alcib. i. 503; also by Horace, Epist. I. i. 73 (Nulla vestigia retrorsum). It comes to us from the medieval prose Phædrus. Probably Indian, as it occurs in the Panchatantra, iii. 14. Also in the Tutinameh, ii. 125.

Babrius 95, told of the Lion and Bear. Certainly Indian, where it occurs in the Panchatantra, iv. 2, except that an Ass occurs instead of a Deer. From India the fable got to Judæa, where it is found in the Rabbinic Commentary on Exodus, here again the animal is an Ass. In both Indian and Greek original the animal loses its heart, which is regarded by the Ancients as the seat of intelligence. I have had to change the missing organ in order to preserve the pun which makes up most of the point of the story. The tale is however of very great critical importance in the