Aesop’s Fables

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Fable 10 of 12

The Dog and His Reflection

In Townsend’s translation: The Dog and the Shadow

A brown dog on a plank footbridge over a stream holds a piece of meat in his jaws and stares down at his reflection, broken by ripples in the water below.

The Fable

A DOG, crossing a bridge over a stream with a piece of flesh in his mouth, saw his own shadow in the water and took it for that of another Dog, with a piece of meat double his own in size. He immediately let go of his own, and fiercely attacked the other Dog to get his larger piece from him. He thus lost both: that which he grasped at in the water, because it was a shadow; and his own, because the stream swept it away.

Real or Reflection?

A short game on the fable

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