Aesop's Fables without drawing a moral. For many centuries the main transmission of Aesop's fables across Europe remained in Latin or else orally in various vernaculars, where they mixed with folk tales derived from other sources. This mixing is often apparent in early vernacular collections of fables in mediaeval times. The main impetus behind the translation of large collections of fables attributed to Aesop and translated into European languages came from an early printed publication in Germany. There had been many small selections in various languages during the Middle Ages but the first attempt at an exhaustive edition was made by Heinrich
There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip his comment on the Latin phrase "inter os atque offam" (between the mouth and the morsel) used by Marcus Cato. The Greek verse is attributed to Palladas in "The Greek Anthology" (X, 32), but that is manifestly erroneous, since Palladas lived two centuries "after" Aulus Gellius. The Loeb Classical Library edition of the Anthology says that the verse is "a very ancient proverb, by some attributed to Homer". There is a reference to the many things that can intervene between cup and lip already in an iambic verse by Lycophron (3rd century B.C.) quoted by Erasmus. According to a story