Aesopi Carmina: Desbillons Book 5

This continues my series of posts about the Latin verse fables of Desbillons; for more about Desbillons, see the starting post.
I'm working through the poems book by book, and this is the post for Book 5, well on the way now to Book 15! 


For each book, I'm including one poem in the blog post. So, you'll find a poem-by-poem index to Book 5 below (linking to the pages at the Internet Archive), and here's the poem I selected from that book, just 5 lines long. This is actually one of my favorite fables! It's not in the classical Aesopic corpus; instead, this is another of the fables that Desbillons took from the Renaissance fabulist Abstemius (for another story from Abstemius, see the dog and the horse from Book 2).


V.20 Cera et Later

Cera invidebat Lateri duritiem suam,

Quam comparari ab ignium violentia

Cum comperisset, se ipsa in ignes dejicit,

At misera penitus liquitur et consumitur.

Quod uni prodest, alteri saepe id nocet.

Here is the poem written out in English prose order to help in reading:

Cera

invidebat Lateri

duritiem suam. 

Cum [Cera] comperisset

duritiem comparari

ab violentia ignium,

ipsa dejicit se

in ignes,

at misera [Cera]

penitus liquitur

et consumitur.

Saepe id

quod prodest uni,

nocet alteri.

This theme of "foolish imitation" shows up again and again in Aesop's fables, but less commonly with inanimate objects as you see here with the candle and the brick.


The meter is iambic, and here is some help with the meter (for more about iambic meter, see the post about Desbillons 1.1). The moral in the last line is a great iambic line to practice saying out loud to get a feel for the meter since it has no substitutions and just one elision (saepe-id).

Cer~ in · vide · bat Late · ri du · ritiem · suam,

Quam com · parar~ · ab ig · nium · violen · tia

Cum com · peris · set, s~ ips~ · in ig · nes de · jicit,

At mise · ra peni · tus liqui · tur et · consu · mitur.

Quod u · ni pro · dest, al · teri · saep~ id · nocet.

This story appears in the fables of the French poet Jean de La Fontaine, which means you can find illustrations in editions of his poems. One of La Fontaine's most famous illustrators was Grandville, and you can see Grandville's illustration here in a graphic I made with imgflip:

More poems in Desbillons, Book 5:



1. camelus (lines: 10)

2. viator et lapides (lines: 11)

3. vulpis et cervus (lines: 12)

4. carbonarius et fullo (lines: 6)

5. cervus et vitis (lines: 12)

6. canis et vulpis (lines: 5)

7. ager in quo thesaurus (lines: 16)

8. venator, palumbes, et cornix (lines: 9)

9. equulus et equus (lines: 20+)

10. gallina et ova crocodili (lines: 5)

11. vulpis et rubus (lines: 6)

12. piscator et thunnus (lines: 6)

13. delphinus et simius (lines: 18)

14. fures et gallus (lines: 7)

15. corvus, asellus, et agaso (lines: 10)

16. amnis et fons (lines: 11)

17. culex et taurus (lines: 6)

18. simia et nux (lines: 5)

19. sus opima (lines: 5)

20. cera et later (lines: 5)

21. lupus et mulus (lines: 14)

22. fluvii duo (lines: 14)

23. pica et columba (lines: 7)

24. avarus et eius filius (lines: 15)

25. arbores (lines: 5)

26. edera et agricola (lines: 20+)

27. piscis fluviatilis et pisces marini (lines: 12)

28. bubulcus et Hercules (lines: 10)

29. simia, porcus, et vulpis (lines: 10)

30. leo et musculus (lines: 14)

31. asellus onustus sale (lines: 11)

32. cucurbita et arbor (lines: 14)

33. lepus et testudo (lines: 20+)

34. Jupiter, Modestia et Virtutes ceterae (lines: 13)

35. caseus et felis (lines: 6)

36. lupi fides (lines: 9)

37. vulpis et ericius (lines: 14)

38. olitor et sepes (lines: 6)

39. alba spina et ficus (lines: 13)

40. sol et noctua (lines: 5)

41. amygdala et pyrus (lines: 8)

42. agricola et arbores (lines: 14)

43. catellus, ovis, et cuniculus (lines: 9)