Among the latter is the well-known fable of the _Fox and the Fishes_, used so dramatically by Rabbi Akiba.

The original Talmudic fables are, according to Mr.J.
Jacobs, the following: _Chaff, Straw, and Wheat_, who dispute for which of them the seed has been sown: the winnowing fan soon decides; _The Caged Bird_, who is envied by his free fellow; _The Wolf and the two Hounds_, who have quarrelled; the wolf seizes one, the other goes to his rival's aid, fearing the same fate himself on the morrow, unless he helps the other dog to-day; _The Wolf at the Well_, the mouth of the well is covered with a net: "If I go down into the well," says the wolf, "I shall be caught.

If I do not descend, I shall die of thirst"; _The Cock and the Bat_, who sit together waiting for the sunrise: "I wait for the dawn," said the cock, "for the light is my signal; but as for thee--the light is thy ruin"; and, finally, what Mr.Jacobs calls the grim beast-tale of the _Fox as Singer_, in which the beasts--invited by the lion to a feast, and covered by him with the skins of wild beasts--are led by the fox in a chorus: "What has happened to those above us, will happen to him above," implying that their host, too, will come to a violent death.

In the context the fable is applied to Haman, whose fate, it is augured, will resemble that of the two officers whose guilt Mordecai detected.
Such fables are used in the Talmud to point religious or even political morals, very much as the parables were.

The fable, however, took a lower flight than the parable, and its moral was based on expediency, rather than on the highest ethical ideals.