HOME | Barlow's Aesop: Previous Page - Next Page

Barlow 21. DE CATTO ET MURIBUS

ONLINE FORUM: At the Aesopus Ning Forum, you can ask questions about this fable. You will also  find links there to additional learning materials to help you in reading the Latin (vocabulary, grammar commentary, simplified version, quizzes, macrons, etc.).

Cattus, cum Pistoris domum ingressus est, quam plurimos invenit Mures et, nunc unum nunc alterum devorando, tam caute patrifamilias providebat ut paucos relinqueret. Mures interim, cum ante oculos habuissent diuturnam illorum caedem, consilium ceperunt quo pacto Cattum vorabundum evitarent. Post varias disceptationes concludebant tandem ut in locis occultis altissimisque remanerent, ne descendendo in praedam Catto venirent. Cattus, hoc consilio intellecto, se mortuum fingebat, cum unus ex Murium senioribus ab alto exclamavit, “Euge, amice! Non Catto credendum est, ne mortuo quidem.”

Translation: A cat came to live in a baker's house, and found an incredible quantity of Mice. By gobbling up one, then another, and so on, the cat so carefully acted on his master's behalf that hardly any mice were left. The mice, meanwhile, when they saw this endless slaughter happening before their eyes,  settled on a plan so that they could escape the voracious cat. After various debates, they finally decided to keep to the hidden and highest places without going down where they would become the Cat's prey. The Cat, having figured out what the mice were doing, pretended to be dead, whereupon one of the elders of the Mice shouted from his high place: Bravo, my friend! But there's no trusting a Cat, not even a dead one.

[This translation is meant as a help in understanding the story, not as a "crib" for the Latin. I have not hesitated to change the syntax to make it flow more smoothly in English, altering the verb tense consistently to narrative past tense, etc.]

Parallels: The Latin story on this page is about the cat who tried to fool the mice by playing dead; see Perry 79. The illustration and the Englsh poem, however, are about the mice who decide to bell the cat; see Perry 613.

Illustration: Here is an illustration for the fable of the cat and the mice, from an early edition of Steinhowel's Aesop.

Here is an illustration from this edition, by the renowned artist Francis Barlow; click on the image for a larger view. This image does not match the Latin story.