The Farmer and the Viper

In the former, the farmer dies reproaching himself "for pitying a scoundrel", while in the version by Phaedrus the snake says that he bit his benefactor "to teach the lesson not to expect a reward from the wicked."

Odo of Cheriton's snake answers the farmer's demand for an explanation with a counter-question, "Did you not know that there is enmity and natural antipathy between your kind and mine?

One of the very earliest is in a poem by the 6th century BCE Greek poet Theognis of Megara, who refers to a friend who has betrayed him as the 'chill and wily snake that I cherished in my bosom'.

[9] The Russian fabulist Ivan Krylov, who often used La Fontaine's fables for a variation of his own, adapted the story to address contemporary circumstances in his "The Peasant & The Snake".

Written at a time when many Russian families were employing French prisoners from Napoleon I's invasion of 1812 to educate their children, he expressed his distrust of the defeated enemy.

[10] In Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Egotism or The Bosom-Serpent" (1843), the proverbial phrase as used in Milton's Samson Agonistes was given a new psychological twist.

A Brahmin priest, assured in the belief that a cobra has a godly nature and will never harm others if treated courteously, is nevertheless killed by the snake when trying to heal and feed it.