Saturday, May 09, 2009

Irenaeus Fabula 27. De Salice et Securi

I'm embarking on a new Latin fable project here at the Latin Via Fables blog: digitizing the 300 fables in the Mithologica sacro-profana, seu florilegium fabularum by P. Irenaeus, published in 1666, which has recently become available at GoogleBooks. For a complete index of the fables in the book, with links to the fables I've digitized so far, check out the Aesopus wiki page at Aesopus.PBwiki.com.

Today's fable is De Salice et Securi, the story of the willow tree and the wedges. In Perry's indexing system, this is Perry 303.

To make reading the fable easier, I've provided a segmented version of the story below.

Securis cedebat salicem et ex truncis sectis cuneos faciebat, quo facilius salicem scinderet. Intelligens salix et videns in quem usum ac finem sic in minuta caederetur, eiulans dicebat: Heu me infortunatam! Non satis est me scindi, nisi etiam de corpore meo cunei fierent in meam ruinam?


Securis
cedebat salicem
et
ex truncis sectis
cuneos faciebat,
quo facilius
salicem scinderet.
Intelligens salix
et videns
in quem usum ac finem
sic in minuta caederetur,
eiulans dicebat:
Heu me infortunatam!
Non satis est me scindi,
nisi etiam de corpore meo
cunei fierent
in meam ruinam?

Here's an illustration for the fable (image source):




Aesop's Fables in Latin now available at Amazon.com.

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