Revival

A farmer, walking on a winter’s day

through his fields, found a frozen snake

and, feeling pity for it, took it up

and put it in his cloak to make it warm.

But when the snake took warmth and had revived,

it bit into its benefactor’s flesh.

And so the dying farmer had to say,

“I die justly, since I pitied evil.”

✻ ✻ ✻ ✻

This is my translation of Aesop’s fable “The Farmer and the Snake.” Does it remind you a a certain contemporary presidential snake who was treated too leniently by the justice system and came awake again to destroy it?

Here is the original:

Γεωργὸς χειμῶνος ἡμέρᾳ ἐν τῷ ἀγρῷ βάδίζων ὄφιν ἔψυχον εὗρεν.

Καὶ ἐλεήσας αὐτὸν, λαβὼν ῎ἐθερμένεν ἐν τῇ χλαμύδι.

Ὁ δὲ ὄφις ἀναβλέψας, δάκνει τὸν εὐεργέτην.

Ὁ δὲ γεωργὸς, ἀποθνῄσκων, εἶπεν· “Δικαίως ἀποθνῄσκω, ὅτι κακόν ἐλέησα.”