Legenda: Canes et Corium

BESTIARIA LATINA BLOG - Latin Via Fables - Zoo - Legenda

Canes et Corium

Scroll down to find: Overview, Study Guide, Verse, Audio, Segmented Prose Text, and Grammar Comments

The story of The Dogs and The Hide is a poem by Phaedrus. It is written in iambic trimeter.

You can find this poem, Phaedrus 1.20, along with other poems by Phaedrus, at the aesopica.net website. The Perry number for this fable is Perry 135.

You can find a translation of a Greek version of this story in Aesop's Fables, by Laura Gibbs (Oxford University Press, 2003).

There is also a translation of this poem into English verse by Christopher Smart which you can also read at the aesopica.net website.

Use this Study Guide to organize your learning activities.

Here is the poem (click "play" icon for brief audio sample):

Stultum consilium non modo effectu caret,
sed ad perniciem quoque mortalis devocat.
Corium depressum in fluvio viderunt canes.
Id ut comesse extractum possent facilius,
aquam coepere ebibere: sed rupti prius
periere quam quod petierant contingerent.

The following version puts the words in a more prose-like order so that it will be easier for you to read:

Stultum consilium non modo effectu caret, sed quoque devocat mortalis ad perniciem.	non modo... sed ... quoque: not only... but also... mortalis = mortales
Canes viderunt corium depressum in fluvio.
Ut facilius possent comesse id extractum, coepere ebibere aquam.	possent: subjunctive introduced by ut coepere = coeperunt ebibere: complementary infinitive with coepere
Sed prius quam contingerent quod petierant, rupti periere.	contingerent: subjunctive with prius quam quod: relative pronoun without stated antecedent