描述
开 本: 16开纸 张: 轻型纸包 装: 平装-胶订是否套装: 否国际标准书号ISBN: 9787544773263
牛津英文经典（Oxford
World’s Classics）为牛津大学出版社百年积淀的精品书系，译林出版社原版引进。除牛津品牌保证的权威原著版本之外，每册书附含名家导读、作品年表、文本注释、背景知识拓展、同步阅读导引、版本信息等，特别适合作为大学生和学有余力的中学生英语学习的材料。导读者包括牛津和剑桥大学的资深教授和知名学者。整套书选目精良，便携易读，实为亲近*名著的经典读本。
《伊索寓言》诞生于两千多年前的古希腊，被誉为西方寓言的始祖，它的出现奠定了寓言作为一种文学体裁的基石，对后世产生了深远的影响，脍炙人口的《狼来了》《龟兔赛跑》《狐狸与乌鸦》《农夫和蛇》等故事正是源自其中。本书收录了600篇寓言，由美国俄克拉何马大学教员、加州大学伯克利分校比较文学博士劳拉·吉布斯撰写导读、注释，并附有各版本索引及内容解析，为读者提供了一个完整可靠的版本。
本书以英译本的形式呈现了用古拉丁文和古希腊文记录的大部分故事，完整收录了600篇寓言，按照情节和寓意重新编排。这些简短的寓言故事大多由动物充当主角，它们的言行举止均表现出人类社会的特征，虽浅显易懂，却发人深省，展示了一个鲜活真实的古希腊世界。书中附有作品导读和注释，全方位解读寓言中蕴含的思想观点和道德意识。
Introduction
Note
on the Text and Translation
Select
Bibliography
Chronology
of the Fables
AESOP’S
FABLES
Aesop,
the Popular Favourite
- The
Fables - Aetiologies,
Paradoxes, Insults, and Jokes
Index
of Perry Numbers
Index
of Sources
General
Index
普通读者可以用这些书建构出一座图书馆。它们已经融入了我们的生活理念之中，我们还想要把它们请入我们的家里。
——牛津大学出版社
《伊索寓言》大可看得。它至少给予我们三种安慰。*，这是一本古代的书，读了可以增进我们对于现代文明的骄傲。第二，它是一本小孩子读物，看了愈觉得我们是成人了，已超出那些幼稚的见解。第三呢，这部书差不多都是讲禽兽的，从禽兽变到人，你看这中间需要多少进化历程！
——钱钟书
AESOP,
THE POPULAR FAVOURITE
Fable
1 (Chambry 96 = Perry 63)
Demades and the Athenians
The
orator Demades was trying to address his Athenian audience. When he failed to
get their attention, he asked if he might tell them an Aesop’s fable. The
audience agreed, so Demades began his story. ‘The goddess Demeter, a swallow,
and an eel were walking together down the road. When they reached a river, the
swallow flew up in the air and the eel jumped into the water.’ Demades then
fell silent. The audience asked, ‘And what about the goddess Demeter?’ ‘As for
Demeter,’ Demades replied, ‘she is angry at all of you for preferring Aesop’s
fables to politics!’
So it is that foolish people
disregard important business in favour of frivolities.
Note:
Demades (d. 319 B.C.E.) was an Athenian orator and diplomat. Demeter was a
Greek agricultural goddess and was of special importance to the Athenians
because of the cult of the Eleusinian Mysteries (see Fable 559).
Fable
2 (pseudo-Plutarch, Lives of the Ten
Orators 848a = Perry 460)
Demosthenes and the Athenians
They
say that during an assembly in Athens, Demosthenes was prevented from making
his speech, so he told the audience he wanted to say just a few words. When the
audience had fallen silent, Demosthenes began his tale. ‘It was summertime, and
a young man had hired a donkey to take him from Athens to Megara. At midday,
when the sun was blazing hot, the young man and the donkey’s driver both wanted
to sit in the donkey’s shadow. They began to jostle one another, fighting for
the spot in the shade. The driver maintained that the man had rented the donkey
but not his shadow, while the young man claimed that he had rented both the
donkey and all the rights thereto.’ Having told this much of the story,
Demosthenes then turned his back on the audience and began to walk away. The
Athenians shouted at him to stop and begged him to finish the story. ‘Indeed!’
said Demosthenes. ‘You want to hear all about the donkey’s shadow, but you
refuse to pay attention when someone talks to you about serious matters!’
Note:
Demosthenes (d. 322 B.C.E.) was a renowned orator of fourth-century Athens.
Megara is a Greek city on the Saronic Gulf to the west of Athens. The ‘donkey’s
shadow’ was an ancient cliche for something of trivial importance (see, for
example, Plato, Phaedrus 260c and Aristophanes, Wasps 191).
- THE
FABLES
FABLES
ABOUT SLAVES AND MASTERS
Fable
3 (Babrius 100 = Perry 346 )
The Wolf, the dog, and the Collar
A
comfortably plump dog happened to run into a wolf. The wolf asked the dog where
he had been finding enough food to get so big and fat. ‘It is a man,’ said the
dog, ‘who gives me all this food to eat.’ The wolf then asked him, ‘And what
about that bare spot there on your neck?’ The dog replied, ‘My skin has been
rubbed bare by the iron collar which my master forged and placed upon my neck.’
The wolf then jeered at the dog and said, ‘Keep your luxury to yourself then! I
don’t want anything to do with it, if my neck will have to chafe against a
chain of iron!’
Note: Caxton
(3.15) adds this epimythium: ‘Therfore there is no rychesse gretter than
lyberte / For lyberte is better than alle the gold of the world.’
Fable
4 (Chambry 264 = Perry 183)
the
donkey, and the Driver
An
onager saw a donkey standing in the sunshine. The onager approached the donkey
and congratulated him on his good physical condition and excellent diet. Later
on, the onager saw that same donkey bearing a load on his back and being
harried by a driver who was beating the donkey from behind with a club. The
onager then declared, ‘Well, I am certainly not going to admire your good
fortune any longer, seeing as you pay such a high price for your prosperity!’
Note:
The onager, or wild ass, once roamed the plains of central Asia. The word
onager is from the Greek onos, ‘donkey’,
and agros, ‘field’.
Fable
5 (Syntipas 30 = Perry 411)
The
Donkey, the Onager, and the Lion
An
onager saw a donkey labouring under a heavy load and he made fun of the donkey’s
enslavement. ‘Lucky me!’ said the onager. ‘I am free from bondage and do not
have to work for anyone else, since I have grass near at hand on the hillsides,
while you rely on someone else to feed you, forever oppressed by slavery and
its blows!’ At that very moment a lion happened to appear on the scene. He did
not come near the donkey since the donkey’s driver was standing beside him. The
onager, however, was all alone, so the lion attacked and devoured him.
The
story shows that people who are obstinate and insubordinate come to a bad end
because they get carried away by their own sense of stubbornness and refuse to
ask others for assistance.
Fable
6 (Phaedrus 4.1 = Perry 164)
The
Donkey, the Priests, and the Tambourines
It
is not enough that a man who is born under an unlucky star leads an unhappy
life: the bitter affliction of his fate pursues him even after he is dead.
The Galli, those priests of the goddess Cybebe, used a donkey to carry their
luggage when they went around begging for alms. When their donkey finally died,
overcome by work and the whip, they stripped his hide and made themselves some
tambourines. When someone asked them what they had done with their darling
donkey, the priests replied, ‘He thought that once he died he would get some
rest, but he keeps on getting beaten just the same!’
Note:
For another fable about the Galli, priests of the Anatolian
goddess Cybebe (or Cybele), see Fable 244. These priests were
famous for their raucous music, including the use of tambourines.
Fable
7 (Phaedrus App. 20 = Perry 548)
Aesop
and the Runaway Slave
A
slave who was running away from his cruel master happened to meet Aesop, who
knew him as a neighbour. ‘What’s got you so excited?’ asked Aesop. ‘Father
Aesop — a name you well deserve since
you are like a father to me — I’m going to be
perfectly frank, since you can be safely trusted with my troubles. There’s
plenty of whipping and not enough food. I’m constantly sent on errands out to
the farm without any provisions for the journey. If the master dines at home, I
have to wait on him all night long; if he is invited somewhere else, I have to
lie outside in the gutter until dawn. I should have earned my freedom by now,
but my hairs have gone gray and I’m still slaving away. If I had done anything
to deserve this, I would stop complaining and suffer my fate in silence. But
the fact is that I never get enough to eat and my cruel master is always after
me. For these reasons, along with others that it would take too long to tell
you, I’ve decided to go wherever my feet will lead me.’ ‘Well,’ said Aesop,
‘listen to what I say: if you must endure such hardship without having done
anything wrong, as you say, then what is going to happen to you now that you
really are guilty of something?’ With these words of advice, Aesop scared the
slave into giving up his plans of escape.
Note:
There is a promythium appended to the fable in Perotti’s Appendix: ‘The
fable shows that you should not add one problem to another.’
Fable
8 (Chambry 164 = Perry 131)
The
Jackdaw and the String
A
man caught a jackdaw and tied the bird’s foot with a piece of string so that he
could give the bird to his children as a present. The jackdaw, however, could
not stand to live in human society, so when they let him loose for just a
moment, he ran away. But when he got back to his nest, the string became
entangled in the branches, so that the jackdaw was unable to fly. As he was
dying, the bird said to himself, ‘How stupid of me! Since I could not stand
being a slave in human society, I have brought about my own death.’
This story is appropriate for people who want to rescue themselves from some
moderate difficulties and, without realizing it, find themselves in even more
serious trouble.
Fable
9 (Maximus of Tyre, Orations 19 = Perry
465)
The
Butcher, the Shepherd, and the Lamb
A
shepherd and a butcher were walking along the road together. They saw a plump
little lamb who had wandered away from the flock and had been left behind by
his fellow sheep. The shepherd and the butcher both rushed to grab the lamb.
This was back in the days when animals spoke the same language as people, so
the lamb asked the two men why they wanted to grab him and carry him off. After
the lamb found out what they both did, he turned and offered himself to the
shepherd. ‘You are nothing but an executioner of sheep,’ he said to the
butcher, ‘and your hands are stained with the blood of the flock! This man, on
the other hand, rejoices if we thrive and prosper.’
Note:
Maximus of Tyre was a Greek philosopher and sophist of the second century C.E.
Fable
10 (Chambry 273* = Perry 179)
The
Donkey and His Masters
There
was a donkey who worked for a gardener. Because the gardener made the donkey
work very hard but gave him very little food, the donkey prayed to Zeus to take
him away from the gardener and give him to another master, so Zeus sent Hermes
to sell the donkey to a potter. The donkey also found this situation
unbearable, since he was forced to carry even heavier loads than before. He
called upon Zeus again, and this time Zeus arranged for the donkey to be
purchased by a tanner. When the donkey saw the kind of work the tanner did, he
said, ‘Oh, it would have been better for me to have kept on working for my
previous masters in a state of starvation! Now I have ended up in a place where
I won’t even get a proper burial after I die.’
The story shows that slaves miss their former masters the most when they
have had some experience with their new ones.
Note: Zeus is
the supreme god of the Greek pantheon, and Hermes is his messenger,
often serving as Zeus’s agent in earthly affairs. For a similar fable about
ever-worsening masters, see Fable 28.
Fable
11 (Phaedrus 1.15 = Perry 476)
The
Old Man, the Donkey, and the Pack Saddles
When
there is a change in government, nothing changes for the poor folk except their
master’s name.
A cowardly old man had led his donkey out to pasture. At the unexpected sound
of the enemy approaching, the old man was stricken with terror and tried to
persuade the donkey to run away so that he wouldn’t be captured. The donkey
obstinately asked the old man, ‘Tell me, do you suppose the victor will make me
carry two pack saddles instead of one?’ The old man said he did not think so. ‘I
rest my case,’ concluded the donkey. ‘What difference does it make who my
master is, if I always carry one saddle at a time?’
Fable
12 (Phaedrus 1.30 = Perry 485)
The
Frogs and the Battle of the Bulls
Poor
folk suffer when the high and mighty are at war with one another.
A frog looked out from her pond and saw a battle taking place between the
bulls. ‘Oh no!’ she said, ‘There is terrible danger in store for us.’ Another
frog asked her why she said this, since the bulls were fighting for control of
the herd in their home far away from the frogs. The first frog explained,
‘While their habitat may be separate from ours and our species not the same,
the bull who is driven from the lordship of the meadow will come to find a
secret hiding place here in the marsh, crushing us beneath his heavy hooves.
That is why their frenzy is a matter of life and death for us!’
Fable
13 (Babrius 90 = Perry 341)
The
Lion and the Fawn
The
lion had gone into in a raging frenzy. A fawn saw him from the woods and said, ‘Oh,
we really are in trouble! Now that the lion is enraged, he will not stop at
anything — and he was already more than we
could bear even before he went out of his mind!’
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