The lamb and the wolf
The lamb and the wolf (Greek: Το αρνί και ο Λύκος) is a fable that is ascribed to the ancient Greek fable poet Aesop and was put into verse form by the Roman poet Phaedrus ( Lupus et agnus , Fables 1, 1). The expression “ not being able to cloud any water ” refers to this fable. The French writer Jean de La Fontaine took up this story in "The Wolf and the Lamb".
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The wolf sees a lamb drinking from a river. He is looking for an occasion to eat it. So he stands further up on the bank and accuses the lamb of making the water cloudy. The lamb replies that it stands on the bank and drinks and that it is also not possible for someone standing below to make the water above this point cloudy. The wolf then accuses the lamb of having insulted his father last year. The lamb replies that it is not even a year old. The wolf then accuses the lamb of hating all of its kin and persecutes and eats the lamb.
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La Fontaine sums up: “The strong are always right.” The strong always find a reason when they commit wrong.
Martin Luther formulated the lesson from the fable: “This is the way the world goes. Whoever wants to be pious has to suffer when looking for a quarrel. Because violence is above the law. If you want to nausea the dog, he has eaten the leather. If the wolf wants it that way, the lamb is wrong. "
Web links
- Aesop: The lamb and the wolf at Gutenberg-DE
- Jean de La Fontaine: The wolf and the lamb at Gutenberg-DE
- Aisopos: Vom Wolff and Lemlin (German by Martin Luther, p. 58) at DSpace at University of Tartu
- wolves.de (currently offline, August 25, 2017)
- Enache, Balder, Gsöllpointner, Müller: Wolf and Lamm. A dialogue about an Aesopian fable (= Phaedrus 1, 1), in: RursuSpicae 2018
- Comment on this fable