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Francis Barlow's illustration of the fable, 1687. The Boy Who Cried Wolf is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 210 in the Perry Index. [1] From it is derived the English idiom "to cry wolf", defined as "to give a false alarm" in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable [2] and glossed by the Oxford English Dictionary as meaning to make false claims, with the result that subsequent true claims are ...
The wolf then leaves him, declaring that a full belly is a poor price to pay for liberty. That the fable dates from before Aesop's time is suggested by a single line surviving from a poem by Archilochos in which the question is asked 'what has caused the scruff of his neck to become so worn'. [2]
The Boy Who Cried Wolf; The Bulls and the Lion; The Cat and the Mice; The Crab and the Fox; The Cock and the Jewel; The Cock, the Dog and the Fox; The Crow and the Pitcher; The Crow and the Sheep; The Crow and the Snake; The Deer without a Heart; The Dog and Its Reflection; The Dog and the Sheep; The Dog and the Wolf; The Dogs and the Lion's ...
The 4th-century grammarian Dositheus Magister also made a collection of Aesop's Fables, now lost. Aesop's Fables continued to be revised and translated through the ensuing centuries, with the addition of material from other cultures, so that the body of fables known today bears little relation to those Aesop originally told.
The Dog and Its Reflection (or Shadow in later translations) is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 133 in the Perry Index. [1] The Greek language original was retold in Latin and in this way was spread across Europe, teaching the lesson to be contented with what one has and not to relinquish substance for shadow.
Three of Aesop's fables on the 11th-century Bayeux Tapestry, with The Wolf and the Lamb at bottom. In his 1692 retelling of the fable, Roger L'Estrange used the English proverb "'Tis an easy Matter to find a Staff to beat a Dog" to sum up the sentiment that any arbitrary excuse will suit the powerful. [5]
The Honest Woodcutter, also known as Mercury and the Woodman and The Golden Axe, is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 173 in the Perry Index. It serves as a cautionary tale on the need for cultivating honesty, even at the price of self-interest. It is also classified as Aarne-Thompson 729: The Axe falls into the Stream. [2]
It is illustrated by two of Aesop's Fables and a similar sentiment is found in ancient Greek drama. Although it has been commonly attributed to Benjamin Franklin, the modern English wording appears earlier in Algernon Sidney's work. The phrase is often mistaken as a scriptural quote, though it is not stated in the Bible.