The Crow and the Snake

In ancient times the fable is found only in Greek sources and concerns a crow in search of food that finds a snake asleep in the sun.

[2] An alternative fable concerning a raven and a scorpion is included as a poem by Archias of Mytilene in the Greek Anthology.

Another epigram by Antipater of Thessalonica, dating from the first century BCE, has an eagle carry off an octopus sunning itself on a rock, only to be entangled in its tentacles and fall into the sea, 'losing both its prey and its life'.

[15] For Samuel Croxall the story served as a warning against covetousness[16] and for Thomas Bewick it illustrated the danger of being ruled by brute appetite.

[17] The latter interpretation had earlier been preferred by Guillaume La Perrière in his emblem book Le theatre des bons engins (1544).