Three Hundred Æsop's Fables/The Dog and the Shadow

For other English-language translations of this work, see The Dog and His Shadow.

London: George Routledge and Sons, page 39


THE DOG AND THE SHADOW.

A Dog, crossing a bridge over a stream with a piece of flesh in his mouth, saw his own shadow in the water, and took it for that of another Dog, with a piece of meat double his own in size. He therefore let go his own, and fiercely attacked the other Dog, to get his larger piece from him. He thus lost both: that which he grasped at in the water, because it was a shadow; and his own, because the stream swept it away.