Motif
Boast answered by admission of vulnerability
boast_answered_by_admission_of_vulnerability
A motif of the Conditional Invulnerability and Hidden Weakness family. Every row below is a tagged passage; each rests on a quote in its source text.
1 occurrences
1 traditions
greek
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Aesop's Fables; a new translation THE MONKEY AND THE CAMEL / THE SICK MAN AND THE DOCTOR / THE TRAVELLERS AND THE PLANE-TREE / THE FLEA AND THE OX; lines 3490-3501 confidence: medium
The Flea asks why the big strong Ox serves mankind and does hard work, while the tiny Flea lives on human bodies, drinks blood, and does no work.
The Flea initially contrasts its idle blood-drinking life with the Ox's labor, but then admits that human patting would destroy it.
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