[In the following essay, Priest discovers the first appearance of "The Dog in the Manger" fable in the 1476/7 collection of Steinhöwel, traces the authority for its inclusion in this edition to the classical writers Lucian and Strato, and rules out known Near Eastern fables and proverbs as possible sources for the fable.']

Locating the historical, cultural and geographical origins of gnomic sayings, is, at best, a precarious enterprise. Emerging as they do from the universals of human experience, proverb, maxim, and fable tend to be both cross cultural and trans-cultural. That "the burnt baby avoids the fire" was as true when fire was discovered or invented as it is today. Detailed folkloristic studies confirm the preceding generality.¹ Nevertheless, when a well-known saying is found in a most unexpected quarter, the curiosity cannot but be piqued and investigation pursued. The following note is the consequence of such a discovery.

The proverb, or fable,² of the dog in the manger is one of the best known in the Aesopic corpus.³ Even those who are only vaguely aware of its connection with Aesop have no hesitance in describing some actions as being like those of the dog in the manger. "He can't or won't use something, but he sure won't let anyone else do so." The very pervasiveness of this story tends to divert the hearer or reader from critical inquiry. For if familiarity breeds contempt, it may also foster facile acceptance. Finding the saying in the Nag Hammadi Gospel of Thomas provoked me to turn to a detailed examination of the currency of the proverb in antiquity. Near the end of Thomas is the following logion:

Jesus said, "Woe to the Pharisees, for they are like a dog sleeping in the manger of oxen, for neither does he eat nor does he let the oxen eat."⁴

This logion is clearly related to words ascribed to Jesus in Matt. 23:13, "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in." (The parallel passage in Luke 11:52 reads, "Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering." It may be noted that another logion in Thomas, 39, follows the Lukan version even more closely: "Jesus said, 'The Pharisees and the scribes have taken the keys of Knowledge and hidden them. They themselves have not entered, nor have they allowed to enter those who wish to.'") The nature of the relationship between Thomas and the canonical gospels—i.e., is the former entirely dependent on the latter, or does it, in some instances at least, contain independent traditions which are as old as the sources behind the canonical texts?—remains a matter of dispute among specialists in the field. It would be presumptuous to enter that debate, nor is it necessary. It is the presence of the "Aesopic" saying which is our concern.

The dog in the manger, it turns out, has a somewhat mixed pedigree. The history of the development of the Aesopic collections and the text traditions of those collections is a fascinating chapter in critical scholarship, and a very brief summary of some of the pertinent details is in order. While fables are found in Greek literature before the time of Aesop (late seventh/early sixth century B.C.?)⁵ it is with his name that the fable quickly became associated. Fables attributed to Aesop are cited in Greek authors from the fifth century B.C. onward,⁶ but the first collection of Aesopic fables seems to have been compiled by Demetrius of Phalerum near the end of fourth or the beginning of the third century B.C.⁷ His work is no longer extant but appears to have been known by the earliest collectors now available to us, Phaedrus (in Latin) in the middle of the first century after Christ and Babrius (in Greek) at the end of that century or early in the next.

Although Phaedrus relates twelve fables mentioning the dog (I. 4, 17, 18, 19, 20, 23, 25, 27; II. 3; III. 7, 15; IV. 19; V. 10 in the Loeb edition⁸), the dog in the manger is not included. Babrius utilizes the dog in fourteen fables (42, 69, 74, 79, 85, 87, 93, 95, 100, 104, 110, 113, 128, 129), but the dog in the manger is absent. What of other known Greek collections? European and American scholarship of the twentieth century has produced detailed critical analyses of the Aesopic manuscript tradition.⁹ While there are considerable differences at some points, Perry's statement may be taken as a fair representation of their conclu sions: "But in spite of the varying contents of the manuscripts, and of the mixing of sources, it is nevertheless easy to distinguish, among the fables themselves, at least four different recensions, upon one or more of which every known manuscript of any consequence either entire or in large part depends."¹⁰ Since the fable of the dog in the manger is firmly a part of the Aesopic tradition as known in printed editions since the fifteenth century, it is an occasion of surprise that it does not seem to appear in any of the ancient collections and is consequently omitted in contemporary critical editions. It is included, however, in Halm's nineteenth-century collection, which was somewhat eclectic and non-critical in nature.¹¹ Whence its origin?

The Aesopic tradition in the Middle Ages depended primarily on Latin and not Greek sources. Indeed, it has been said that "Our Aesop is Phaedrus with trimmings."¹² The most extensive collection was the socalled Romulus,¹³ although collections attributed to Avianus and others supplemented the stock of fables in circulation. Though this note does not purport to set forth a summary of the history of fable collections, it is not inappropriate to mention briefly two additional ones which are of considerable interest to those of us in the English tradition and which bear, albeit indirectly, on the checkered history of the dog in the manger.

In the late twelfth century an Anglo-Norman writer, Marie de France, issued a collection of Aesopian fables. Though less well known than her Lais, the collection is a valuable witness to the spread of the Aesopic tradition in Western Europe. She included 102 fables,¹⁴ most of which are drawn from the Romulus collections. She used other sources in addition, however, and a number of her fables are nowhere else attested. Her work is in Norman French, but she claimed that she was making a translation of an English collection which she attributed to Alfred the Great. She did not, among her independent fables, include the dog in the manger. Connected, directly or indirectly, with Marie de France was the Jewish fabu-list Berechiah ha-Nakdam. Though a native of France, Berechiah apparently spent considerable time in England and his "Fox Fables," numbering 119 in the most recent critical edition,¹⁵ show considerable dependence on Marie. Like her, he includes a considerable number of independent fables. Once again the dog in the manger is missing.

A brief summary is in order. The story of the dog in the manger is surprisingly missing from the major Greek manuscript traditions, from the standard Latin "Vulgate" (Romulus, Avianus and other miscellaneous Latin collections), and from the independent traditions upon which Marie de France and Berechiah ha-Nakdam drew. We may now turn to what is apparently its first appearance in an Aesopic collection of fables. Heinrich Steinhöwel, in 1476/7, published a comprehensive collection of Aesopic fables in Latin with a German translation. He utilized as his base the four books of the Romulus, which as we have seen do not include the dog in the manger, but he also included fables from a wide variety of other Latin sources.¹⁶ One of those sources, consisting of seventeen fables, he entitled "Fabulae Extravagantes" since they were not found in any of the standard collections known to him.¹⁷ The eleventh of the Extravagantes is the fable in question.¹⁸ Steinhöwel's collection was an immediate success and became the basis of a French translation by Julien Mach in 1480 which, in turn, provided the material for Caxton's English translation in 1483/4. Caxton did not follow the scholarly caution of Steinhöwel, who had noted the extraneous nature of the Extravagantes, but simply included them as Book Five of Aesop. Thus, with Caxton, the dog in the manger became enshrined in the English Aesopic tradition.

One is led to ask whether we can account for the basis upon which this fable entered the tradition (even if it was seemingly by the back door). The answer is not difficult to find. Though they do not mention Aesop, at least two second-century authors, Lucian (Adv. Indoctum 30 and Timon 14) and Strato of Sardis (Gk. Anth. xii, 236), allude to the fable. Further, a fourteenth-century manuscript, Mosquensis 239, contains some so-called proverbs of Aesop, and in Krumbacher's edition of that manuscript the dog in the manger appears.¹⁹ It seems appropriate to examine the forms in which the fable occurs in Lucian, Strato, and the Mosquensis.

Lucian: Adv. Indoctum 30 (Loeb translation)

But you never lent a book to anyone; you act like the dog in the manger, who neither eats the grain [barley] herself nor lets the horse eat it who can.

Timon 14 (Loeb translation)

… they were shutting out everyone else from a share in the enjoyment, like the dog in the manger that neither ate the barley herself nor permitted the hungry horse to eat it.

Strato: Gk. Anth. xii, 236 (Loeb translation)

A certain eunuch has good looking servant boys—for what use?—and he does them abominable injury. Truly, like the dog in the manger with the roses, and stupidly barking, he neither gives the good thing to himself nor to anyone else.

Mosquensis: 239 (My translation)

A dog lying in the manger does not eat nor does he permit the ass (to eat).

We may add the version found in Halm's edition, which cites Lucian, Adv. Indoctum 30, as the source. "A dog lying in the manger would neither eat of the barley herself nor permit the horse, who was able to eat, to do so" (my translation).

The essentials are constant in each version. The variants, the shift of tenses…, and the substitution of ass for horse in Mosquensis, are inconsequential.²⁰ The Latin version, from the Extravagantes, is, as might be expected, expanded considerably. Two minor differences may be noted, as one of them has some bearing on the form of the saying in Thomas. "A dog without conscience lay in a manger full of hay (feno). When the cattle (boves) came to eat of the hay he would not let them, but showed his teeth in ugly mood. The oxen (boves) protested…."²¹ The change of food from barley to hay may be passed over, as no mention is made of grain in Thomas, but the presence of the cattle (oxen) rather than the horse/ass in the Greek texts will require some discussion later in this note, since the specified animals in Thomas are also oxen.

We have thus far examined the fable tradition in its Greek and Latin forms, but even in antiquity there were divergent opinions concerning the culture which first produced fables. Libya, Egypt, Lydia, and Sybaris are mentioned.²² Further, Babrius clearly states that "Fable, son of King Alexander, is the invention of the Syrians of old, who lived in the days of Ninus and Belus. The first to tell fables to the Hellenes, they say, was Aesop the wise; and to the Lybians Cybisses also told fables."²³ Although folklorists of the nineteenth century suggested a wide variety of cultures as the fountainhead of the fable, e.g. India, Arabia, North Africa, and Israel,²⁴ more recent archaeological dis coveries have tended to support Babrius' comment. Fables and proverbs in the "Aesopic" form are found in Sumerian, Akkadian and Aramaic texts from the third millenium onward. While direct parallels in content are rare, it seems established that the fable tradition in Greece was derived from Mesopotamia, probably through contacts in Asia Minor. Perry states the case succinctly:

In the Sumerian proverbs from Nippur, viewed in the light of their later tradition in the Semitic Orient, we have the final answer to the question that was often asked and variously resolved by philogogists and folklorists in the last century, namely, when and where did the Aesopic fable, as known to the Greeks, originate? As a form it did not originate with the Greeks themselves, and it did not come to them from the Hindus or the Hebrews or the Egyptians; it came to them by way of the neo-Babylonian and Assyrian wisdom literature.²⁵

Although some scholars still minimize the "Assyrian" influence,²⁶ the weight of opinion supporting the view requires an examination of some of the evidence, par ticularly as it may relate to the fable considered in this note.

The fable form was popular and pervasive throughout the ancient Near East. The collections alluded to by Perry in the quotation above provide striking confirmation of that observation, though the evidence is by no means limited to the material he was discussing. Kramer summarized the Sumerian material (as of 1959) in this way: "In the past several years Gordon has pieced together and translated a total of 295 proverbs and fables relating to some 64 species of animal life: mammals, birds and members of the so-called lower species of animal life down to the insects."²⁷ There are approximately seventy references to the dog in the material published by Gordon, but nothing resembling the dog in the manger has yet appeared. Thus, although the Sumerian material is of invaluable importance for tracing the history of the fable genre, it sheds no light on the saying in question. Much closer to the time of Aesop is the well-known Aramaic tale of Ahikar. Embedded in the story are collections of proverbs clearly in the "Aesopic" tradition. According to Clement of Alexandria, there was a Greek translation which was known to the philosopher Democritus. According to Diogenes Laertius (V, 49-50), Theophrastus wrote one book on Democritus and another entitled "Achicar." Since Theophrastus was the teacher of Demetrius, who as we have seen is reputed to have been the first collector of Aesop, it is highly probable that the shape of the fable tradition in Greece was influenced by Ahikar and other similar Semitic collections.²⁸ The influence, as noted earlier, seems to have been more in form than content, although Perry called attention to some nine or ten fables in Babrius which he felt were derived from Ahikar.²⁹

The dog is mentioned twelve times in the translations of the Syriac, Arabic and Armenian versions of Ahikar with an additional reference in an Ethiopie fragment.³⁰ One saying warrants special attention, as it has sometimes been stated that it constitutes at least a vague parallel to the dog in the manger.

Syriac: My son, thou hast been to me like the dog that came to the potter's oven to warm himself, and after he was warm rose up to bark at them. (8:17)

Arabic: O my son, thou hast been to me like the dog that was cold and it went into the potter's house to get warm. And when it had got warm, it began to bark at them, and they chased it out and beat it, that it might not bite them. (8:19)

Armenian: Son, thou hast been to me like the dog which went into the oven of the potter. When he was warm, he began to bark at them. (8:19)

With these may be compared a Babylonian proverb which appears in a seventh-century-B.C. letter but which probably is older: "When the potter's dog enters the kiln it will bark at the potter."³¹

The exact point of the Babylonian proverb is not clear. It may indicate that "the dog inside the kiln is really in a very vulnerable position to bark at its master."³² This interpretation is congruent with the additions in the Arabic version, but a general reference to ingratitude seems more likely. In any case, neither the saying in the versions of Ahikar nor the Babylonian proverb has a real link with the point of the dog in the manger.

Hebrew and Jewish literature in the Bible and in later rabbinic writings is a part of the cultural milieu being examined. The fable genre is not widespread in the Hebrew Bible, there being but two full-fledged examples.³³ Judg. 9:8-15 contains a somewhat lengthy fable about trees seeking a king to reign over them. The olive, pleading its fatness, the fig pleading its sweetness, and the vine calling attention to its role in making the wine which cheers gods and men, all declined. Then, the bramble accepted, with the warning that fire might ensue. The lesson was a warning to the inhabitants of Shechem who were choosing a potential firebrand to reign.³⁴ A much briefer fable is found in II Kings 14:9 = II Chronicles 25:18. "A thistle on Lebanon sent to a cedar on Lebanon, saying, 'Give your daughter to my son for a wife'; and a wild beast of Lebanon passed by and trampled down the thistle." Here the point is a warning against the inordinate pride of a Judean king, Amaziah, in comparison with his stronger counterpart, Jehoash of Israel. Solomon, the patron saint of Israelite wisdom, is reputed to "have uttered three thousand proverbs; and his songs were a thousand and five. He spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop which grows out of the wall; he spoke also of beasts, and of birds, and of reptiles, and of fish." (I Kings 4:32 f. = Hebrews 5:12 f.) Some have inferred from this passage that there was an extensive fable tradition in Israel, but if such be the case it has left little mark in the extant biblical materials.

The collections of proverbial material attributed by tradition to Solomon mention animals in a number of sayings (6:6-11; 7:22 f; 11:22; 14:4; 15:17; 17:12; 19:12; 20:2; 21:31; 22:13; 26:2 f.; 26:11, 13, 17; 27:8, 23, 26; 28:15; 30:15, 17-19, 24-31). Only three approximate the fable tradition. 6:6-11 is the famous "Go to the ant, thou sluggard…," which is paralleled in the Aesopic traditions (fables 112 and 372 in Perry's edition).³⁵ 30:19 alludes to "the way of the eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock," suggesting an analogy from the animal world; and 30:24-31 may be cited in full to illustrate the difference between Israelite proverbs and "Aesopic" fables:

What is significantly lacking is the story form which is an essential ingredient of the fable. While timeless truths may be inferred from fables, they must be told as having occurred once at a specific time.³⁶

Fables do appear in later Jewish materials, the Talmud and the Midrash, but even there they are comparatively rare.³⁷ There is a tradition that there was an extensive collection of Fox Fables, some three hundred in number, known to the late-second-century Rabbi Meir, but only two or three of them have survived. There is a note in the Mishnah, Sotah 9:15, that the making of fables ceased with Meir. None of the surviving fables sheds any light on the dog in the manger. Again a potential clue to the fable proves to be inutile, and our earlier summary of the omission of it in the Greek and Latin collections may be extended to the witnesses of Sumerian, Akkadian, Aramaic and Hebrew.

We have noted that the first appearance of the dog in the manger in a collection seems to be SteinhowePs inclusion of the Extravagantes of unknown origin, but we have also noted that allusion to the fable is made by at least two authors in the second century, Lucian and Strato. To them we must return. Halm's edition, as noted above, cited Lucian as the source of the fable, and Chambry noted that the fable probably occurs for the first time in Lucian.³⁸ Strato should also be considered as a possibility. Our question is, do we know anything about either Lucian or Strato which might bear on the presence of the dog in the manger in Thomas?

The majority of Nag Hammadi specialists agree that the Gospel was written near the middle of the second century after Christ. There is less agreement to its geographical provenance, the most popular choices being between Greater Syria, which could include Palestine and western Mesopotamia, and Egypt.³⁹ The traditional dates for Lucian are c. 120-190 and for Strato in the reign of Hadrian (A.D. 117-135).⁴⁰ Lucian was born in Samosata, located on the upper Euphrates, occasionally refers to himself as a Syrian and implies that Greek was not his mother tongue. Further, con trary to advice he had given earlier, Lucian accepted a "bread and butter"⁴² administrative post with the Roman government in Egypt. Biographical information about Strato is sparse indeed, but he was born at Sardis in Asia Minor, and all of his geographical allusions are to Asia Minor—with one exception. His epigram in Gk. Anth., xi, 117 (Loeb edition) almost certainly refers to his presence in Alexandria.⁴³

The similarities in date and place (broadly speaking) between the two classical authors from whom there is evidence for the saying and the Gospel of Thomas may be pure coincidence. Grant may be correct in saying that "The dog in the manger is, of course, proverbial, and it was proverbial in the second century, as we know from the Greek satirist Lucian (Timon 14;Adv. Indoctum 30). The story is told as a fable of Aesop (Fab. Aesop., 228, page 111, Halm). Its presence in these literary or semi-literary sources does not

mean that it was unknown outside them. Thomas could have picked it up anywhere."⁴⁴ It is true that one can hardly claim literary dependence on either side, and the use of "horse" in Lucian and "oxen" in Thomas almost certainly indicates that each drew upon a divergent form of the fable.⁴⁵ On the other hand, the similarities can be more than pure coincidence and provide us with some closing suggestions.

First, although argument from silence is dangerous, the earliest attested appearance of the proverb/fable in three second-century-authors supports the generally proposed date for Thomas. This is not new, but it is corroborative. Second, the reverse side of the coin is that additional support is given to the opinion that the first use of the proverb/fable by a classical author was by either Lucian or Strato. Again we have not new information but independent corroboration. Third, the presence of the saying in contemporary pagan and Jewish/Christian sources reminds us of the cultural interpenetrations of the late Hellenistic world. Religiocultural isolationism is an impossibility.

There is a fable in Phaedrus which may seem applicable to this note. "A mountain, being in the pangs of labour, was emitting tremendous groans, and the lands about were filled with the greatest expectations. Then, behold that mountain gave birth to a mouse. This was written for you who threaten to do great things but fail to get anything done." (IV, 24 in the Loeb edition).⁴⁶ Obviously I would not agree, for though no "breakthrough" in scholarship has emerged from the study, careful re-evaluation of regnant theses in terms of new evidence can make a contribution to our understanding.

Notes

¹ The Stith Thompson Motif Index of Folk Literature (Bloomington 1932-36) is the classic example in English.

² Beginning with the formulation of Theon in his Progymnasmata (ch. 3) that a fable is … a ficticious story picturing a truth, I follow Perry's extended definition. "A fable must contain three features … it must be obviously and deliberately ficticious, whether possible or not … it must purport to be a particular action, series of actions, or an utterance that took place once in past time through the agency of particular characters … it must be told, at least ostensibly, not for its own sake as a story … but for the sake of a point that is moral, paranetic or personal." Aesopica I (Urbana 1952) p. ix. See also his extended discussion in Studium Generale 12 (1959) pp. 17-37 and his briefer summary in the Loeb edition of Babrius and Phaedrus (Cambridge 1965) pp. xix-xxxiv. This definition is, of course, not the only one in use. In this note the terms fable, proverb, saying and story are used interchangeably.

³ Included in the corpus are both material collected under Aesop's name and material attributed to others but in the "Aesopic" style.

⁴ Translation by Thomas Lambdin in The Nag Hammadi Library, ed. James M. Robinson (San Francisco 1981) p. 129. Other English translations include The Gospel According to Thomas, ed. Guillaumont, Puech, Quispel and al Masih (New York 1959), which includes the Coptic text, and The Secret Sayings of Jesus, ed. Robert M. Grant and David N. Freedman (Garden City 1960). The translation is by William R. Schoedel.

⁵ For a discussion of Greek fables before Aesop, see Perry, Babrius and Phaedrus, p. xii, and Emile Chambry, Esope (Paris 1960) pp. xxii-xxiii.

⁶ See the references in Babrius and Phaedrus, pp. xiiixiv, and Chambry, pp. xxviii-xxxi.

⁷ See B. E. Perry, "Demetrius of Phalerum and the Aesopic Fables" TAPA 93 (1962) pp. 287-346, for an extensive discussion.

⁸ This includes Perotti's Appendix, pp. 373-417.

⁹ Perhaps the most detailed are those of Chambry (French), Hausrath (German), and Perry (English).

¹⁰Studies in the Text History of the Life and Fables of Aesop (Haverford 1936) p. 73.

¹¹ Karl Halm, Fabulae Aesopicae Collectae (Leipzig 1868).

¹² Joseph Jacobs, History of the Aesopic Fable (New York 1970) p. 1. This was originally published in 1889.

¹³ There was no "standard" Romulus, but rather "Romulean" collections. See Jacobs, History, pp. 1-15.

¹⁴ This is the number cited in Mary L. Martin, The Fables of Marie de France: A Critical Commentary with English Translation (Ann Arbor 1979). This University of Texas dissertation is commended highly. See also Emanuel J. Mickel, Jr., Marie de France (New York 1974) for a good overview of the life and works of this remarkable woman.

¹⁵ A. M. Haberman, Mishle Shualim I'Rabbi Berekhyah ha-Naqdan (Jerusalem 1945-46). An English translation, with introduction, is by Moses Hadas, Fables of a Jewish Aesop (New York 1967).

¹⁶ For a succinct discussion of the Steinhowel collection, see R. T. Lenaghan, Caxton's Aesop (Cambridge 1967) pp. 4-18.

¹⁷ The source of the Extravagantes remains a mystery. Jacob's suggestion that they may represent the medieval Aesop of Alfred (History, p. 203) is dubious.

¹⁸ The Latin text is in Perry, Aesopica, p. 696, and an English translation in Babrius and Phaedrus, p. 597.

¹⁹ I have not had access to the Krumbacher edition and cite it from Perry, Aesopica, p. 276.

²⁰ Strata's obvious other interest in the fable probably led to the omission of the animal barred from the barley.

²¹ Perry's translation in Babrius and Phaedrus, p. 597.

²² See the brief discussion in OCD², p. 428.

²³ Loeb edition, pp. 138 f.

²⁴ See the interesting discussion in Jacobs, History, pp. 40-158.

²⁵ Perry, AJA 66 (1962) pp. 205-7. Cf. Moses Hadas, History of Greek Literature (New York 1950). "The fable constitutes the one genre in which the Greeks seem to have acted as intermediaries between the ancient East and ourselves" (p. 68).

²⁶ E.g. Chambry, p. xxv. Handford's comment repre sents well this position. "There is reason to believe that some Egyptian and Assyrian fables became known to the Greeks in classical times, but no evidence exists to suggest that the influences were early or important. As far as we can see, therefore, the fable was invented by the Greeks—it may well be the Greeks of Asia Minor, the country of the lion which appears so often in the stories, and the traditional birthplace of Aesop,"Fables of Aesop (Hammandsworth 1964) p. xiv.

²⁷ S. N. Kramer, History Begins at Sumer (Garden City 1959) p. 127. The works of Gordon to which he refers have been designated Collections 1-5. Collection four was published in JAOS 77 (1957) pp. 67-79, collection five in JCS 12 (1958) pp. 1-21, 43-75, and collections one and two in Sumerian Proverbs (Philadelphia 1959). Collection three, which Gordon noted was "the best preserved of all the proverb collections" (BO 17 [1960] p. 128) unfortunately has not yet been published because of the death of the editor. The editor of JCS has informed me by correspondence that it will soon appear in an edition being prepared by Dr. Robert Falkowitz.

²⁸ Perry, Babrius and Phaedrus, pp. lix-lx.

²⁹Ibid, p. lx.

³⁰ I have used the translations in Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, ed. R. H. Charles (Oxford 1913) pp. 715-84.

³¹ W. L. Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature (Oxford 1960) p. 281. The proverb is translated quite differently by R. H. Pfeiffer, Ancient Near Eastern Texts (Princeton 1955) p. 426. Pfeiffer, however, gives an alternative translation close to Lambert's.

³² Lambert, p. 281.

³³ Perry, Studium Generale, p. 23, includes three more, II Sam. 12:1-6; II Sam. 14:6-11 and I Kings 20:39-42. They seem to be problematical.

³⁴ This fable is found in Aesopic collections, 262 in Perry, and may indicate the work of a Jewish or Christian editor.

³⁵ It is interesting that the medieval Jewish fabulist, ha-Nakdam preserves this fable (Hadas, p. 38) and conflates it with Proverbs 22:13 and 26:13, "there is a lion in the streets."

³⁶ See the definition of fable in note 2 above.

³⁷ Most studies suggest that there are approximately thirty extant fables in the Talmudic and Midrashic material. See Jacobs, History, p. 110; Israel Abrahams, Chapters on Jewish Literature (Philadelphia 1899) p. 64; Enc. Jud. (Jerusalem 1972) vol. 6, col. 1128. Hayim Schwarzbaum, coll. 1128. Hayim Schwarzbaum, Talmudic-Midrashic Affinities of Some Aesopic Fables (Berlin 1965), does not refer to the fable under discussion.

³⁸ Chambry, Aesope, p. xxxiii.

³⁹ See the discussions in Hugh Montefiore and H. E. W. Turner, Thomas and the Evangelists (London 1962) pp. 12 f.; W. C. van Unnik, Newly Discovered Gnostic Writings (London 1960) p. 49; Helmut Koester, The Nag Hammadi Library (San Francisco 1981) p. 117; Hennecke-Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha I, Xx. R. L. McWilson (Philadelphia 1963) p. 306.

⁴⁰ Rudolf Keydell, "Bemurkungen zu Griechischen Epigrammen" Hermes 80 (1952) pp. 497-500, has ar gued that the epigram used to date Strato, Gk. Anth. xi, 117 (Loeb edition), is not to be ascribed to him. Keydell argues that a comparison of some epigrams in Strato and Martial demonstrates the priority of the former. He dates Strato in Nero's reign. In this note I continue to accept the traditional dating.

⁴¹Bis accus. 27 in Loeb, Lucian iii, pp. 136-37. See also OCD², p. 621.

⁴² Albin Lesky, A History of Greek Literature, tr. James Willis and Cornells de Heer (London 1966) p. 841.

⁴³ Keydell's argument referred to in note 40 would remove Strato from Egypt. That would not affect the argument here, which is content to speak of a general eastern Mediterranean provenance.

⁴⁴ Grant, Secret Sayings, p. 190.

⁴⁵ A textual problem in Proverbs 14:4 is interesting in this respect. The received Hebrew text reads literally "Where there are no oxen, there is a manger of grain." This is usually emended to read "Where there are no oxen, there is no grain." The latter is probably correct, but the connection manger-grain-oxen in a variant reading might have some bearing on the shift in Thomas from horse to oxen.

⁴⁶ Cf. Horace, AP 139, "parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus."