The Dove and the Ant is a story about the reward of compassionate behaviour. Included among

Aesop's Fables Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Of diverse origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to ...

, it is numbered 235 in the

Perry Index The Perry Index is a widely used index of "Aesop's Fables" or "Aesopica", the fables credited to Aesop, the storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC. The index was created by Ben Edwin Perry, a professor of classics at the Un ...

The fable

There has been little variation in the fable since it was first recorded in Greek sources. An ant falls into a stream and a dove comes to the rescue by holding out a blade of grass to allow it to climb out. Then, noticing that a fowler was about to catch the dove, the ant bit his foot and his sudden movement caused the bird to fly away. In the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...

the

Neo-Latin New Latin (also called Neo-Latin or Modern Latin) is the revival of Literary Latin used in original, scholarly, and scientific works since about 1500. Modern scholarly and technical nomenclature, such as in zoological and botanical taxonomy ...

poets

Hieronymus Osius Hieronymus Osius was a German Neo-Latin poet and academic about whom there are few biographical details. He was born about 1530 in Schlotheim and murdered in 1575 in Graz. After studying first at the university of Erfurt, he gained his master's ...

and Pantaleon Candidus included it in their fable collections. In England it appeared early in

William Caxton William Caxton ( – ) was an English merchant, diplomat and writer. He is thought to be the first person to introduce a printing press into England, in 1476, and as a printer to be the first English retailer of printed books. His parentage a ...

's collection of Aesop's fables and was later included in those of Francis Barlow and

Samuel Croxall Samuel Croxall (c. 1690 – 1752) was an Anglican churchman, writer and translator, particularly noted for his edition of Aesop's Fables. Early career Samuel Croxall was born in Walton on Thames, where his father (also called Samuel) was vicar ...

. It also appeared in

Thomas Bewick Thomas Bewick (c. 11 August 17538 November 1828) was an English wood-engraver and natural history author. Early in his career he took on all kinds of work such as engraving cutlery, making the wood blocks for advertisements, and illustrating ch ...

's ''Select Fables'', but was there told of a bee rather than an ant.

La Fontaine's Fables Jean de La Fontaine collected fables from a wide variety of sources, both Western and Eastern, and adapted them into French free verse. They were issued under the general title of Fables in several volumes from 1668 to 1694 and are considered cla ...

also include this story and underline the kinship between it and The Lion and the Mouse by running the two together under a common introduction: :::To show to all your kindness it behoves :::There's none so small but you his aid may need. :::I quote two fables for this weighty creed :::Which either of them fully proves. The difference is that while the lion only showed compassion upon appeal, the dove does so out of pure good nature. The story also has details in common with The Fowler and the Snake. In both a bird is saved from being taken by a fowler by his being stung, although the aggressors have very different motives. Other interpretations have been made of the fable. In a 1947 postcard series it is turned into a political statement in the aftermath of the occupation of France by the

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in N ...

. There a little boy with a slingshot distracts a man with an armband labelled "Law" from chasing a girl who is running away with stolen apples in her pinafore. La Fontaine's fable was later set by

Paul Bonneau Paul Bonneau (14 September 1918 – 8 July 1995) was a French Conducting, conductor, composer and arranger, whose career was mainly in the field of light music and films. Career Born in Moret-sur-Loing in 1918, Paul Bonneau studied music at the ...

among his ''10 Fables de La Fontaine'' (1957) and Aesop's is the fourth of five pieces by

Anthony Plog Anthony Plog (born November 13, 1947) is an American conductor, composer and trumpet player. Life Plog was born in Glendale, California, United States. He is a fellow of the Music Academy of the West where he attended in 1968. From 2006 to 2007 ...

for narrator, piano and horn (1989/93). Later it also appeared among the three in Canadian Yvonne Gillespie's ''Aesop's Fables'' for narrator and full orchestra (2001).Canadian Music Centre
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References

External links

Book illustrations
from the 15th - 20th centuries {{Aesop Dove and the Ant, The Dove and the Ant, The Dove and the Ant, The Dove and the Ant, The Dove and the Ant, The