The Bird in Borrowed Feathers is a fable of Classical Greek origin usually ascribed to Aesop. It has existed in numerous different versions between that time and the Middle Ages, going by various titl
The Crow Exposed by Melchior d' Hondecoeter (ca. 1680), oil on canvas, 170.2 × 211.5 cm., Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Harrison Weir's illustration of The Vain Jackdaw, 1881
The fable applied to Napoleon in a political cartoon
Phaedrus (fabulist)
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Gaius Julius Phaedrus or Phaeder was a 1st-century AD Roman fabulist and the first versifier of a collection of Aesop's fables into Latin. Nothing is recorded of his life except for what can be inferr
The Bird in Borrowed Feathers
…feathers are also torn away. The lesson to be learned is that borrowed finery brings humiliation. The second version stems from the Latin collection of Phaedrus and is numbered 472 in the Perry Index. In this a jackdaw (or jay in Caxton's telling) that has found some peacock feathers and stuck them among its…
Phaedrus, 1745 engraving