Page:The Fables of Æsop (Jacobs).djvu/248

218 history of the fable, and I have inserted it mainly for that reason. Mr. G. C. Keibel has studied the genealogy of the various versions in a recent article in ''Zeits. für vergleich. Literaturgeschichte, 1894, p. 264 seq.''

Æschylus' Myrmidons as given by the Scholiast on Aristophanes' Aves, 808. Æschylus quotes it as being a Libyan fable, it is therefore probably Eastern. Byron refers to it in his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers:

He got the idea from Waller, To a lady singing a song of his composing. Cf. La Fontaine, ii. 6.

From Phædrus, though not in the ordinary editions, the whole of the poem, however, can be restored from the prose version in the medieval Esopus ad Rufum. (See my History, p. 12.) The fable is told of a weasel by the dramatist Strattis, c. 400 B.C., and by Alexis, 375 B.C. Probably Indian, as a similar story occurs in the Panchatantra. A Brahmin saves a Mouse and turns it into a Maiden whom he determines to marry to the most powerful being in the world. The Mouse-Maiden objects to the Sun as a husband, as being too hot: to the Clouds, which can obscure the Sun, as being too cold: to the Wind, which can drive the Clouds, as too unsteady: to the Mountain, which can