Click here for a SLIDESHOW of all the Medici Aesop images.I like the way this shows both stages of the story - the young boy on the left, and the grown-up thief on the right.
M0911 = Perry200. Source: Clarke 174 (word order adapted). This is Perry 200. In other versions of this fable, the thief bites off her nose. Compare the modern fable by the satirist Ambrose Bierce, where the mother gets the last word (from Fantastic Fables, 1899): “A Boy who had been taught by his Mother to steal grew to be a man and was a professional public official. One day he was taken in the act and condemned to die. While going to the place of execution, he passed his Mother and said to her: ‘Behold your work! If you had not taught me to steal, I should not have come to this.’ ‘Indeed!’ said the Mother. ‘And who, pray, taught you to be detected?’”
