The Flies and the Honey-Pot

Title Here (Joseph Jacobs's Version)


(From the book The Fables of Aesop: Selected, Told Anew, and Their History Traced by Joseph Jacobs, done into pictures by Richard Heighway — Public Domain)


The Flies and the Honey-Pot (George Fyler Townsend's Version)

A number of Flies were attracted to a jar of honey which had been overturned in a housekeeper’s room, and placing their feet in it, ate greedily. Their feet, however, became so smeared with the honey that they could not use their wings, nor release themselves, and were suffocated. Just as they were expiring, they exclaimed, “O foolish creatures that we are, for the sake of a little pleasure we have destroyed ourselves.”

Pleasure bought with pains, hurts.

(From the book Three Hundred Æsop’s Fables Literally Translated from the Greek by the Rev. George Fyler Townsend, M.A. — Public Domain)


Title Here (V. S. Vernon Jones's Version)


(From the book Aesop's Fables: A New Translation by V. S. Vernon Jones, with an introduction by G. K. Chesterton and illustrations by Arthur Rackham — Public Domain)


Title Here (Milo Winter's Version)


(From the book The Æsop for Children, with pictures by Milo Winter — Public Domain)


Title Here (J. H. Stickney's Version)


(From the book Æsop’s Fables: A Version for Young Readers by J. H. Stickney, illustrated by Charles Livingston Bull — Public Domain)


Title Here (Samuel Croxall's Version)


(From the book Æsop's Fables, Embellished with One Hundred and Eleven Emblematical Devices. Translator: Samuel Croxall — Public Domain)


Title Here (Thomas Bewick's Version)


(From the book The Fables of Æsop, and Others, with designs on wood by Thomas Bewick — Public Domain)


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