The Goat and the Vine
The Goat and the Vine is counted as one of
The fable and its versions
When a goat starts eating a vine's leaves and shoots, the vine retorts that it will still have enough juice left to produce grapes, the wine from which will be poured over it when the goat is sacrificed. The earliest record of the fable is in an epigram by Leonidas of Tarentum, who lived in the area of southern Italy colonised by Greeks in the 3rd century BCE.[1] Later Greek references come from Western Asia, including another epigram by Evenus of Ascalon containing simply the vine's retort[2] and the prose collection of fables by Aphthonius of Antioch.[3] Elsewhere in Europe it first appeared in Latin fable collections from German language areas, including Sebastian Brant's Esopi Appologi sive Mythologi (1501)[4] and the 150 poems based on fables by Pantaleon Candidus (1604).[5] The tale only began to appear in English fable collections in the 19th century.
In ancient times there was an alternative version of the fable that appeared in various recensions of the story of
References
External links
19–20th century illustrations from books