The _Dialogues of Creatures moralised_ preceded, however, the _Fables_ of Faerni by above eighty years. “In the Latin and Dutch only there were not less than fifteen known editions before 1511.”[142] An edition in Dutch is named as early as 1480, and one in French in 1482; and the English version appeared, it is likely, at nearly as early a date. These and other books of fables, though by a contested claim, are often regarded as books of Emblems. The best Emblem writers, even the purest, introduce fables and little tales of various kinds; as _Alciat_, Emb. 7, The Image of Isis, the Ass and the Driver; Emb. 15, The Cock, the Lion, and the Church; Emb. 59, The Blackamoor washed White, &c.: _Hadrian Junius_, Emb. 4, The caged Cat and the Rats; Emb. 19, The Crocodile and her Eggs: _Perriere_, Emb. 101, Diligence, Idleness, and the Ants. They all, in fact, adopted without scruple the illustrations which suited their particular purpose; and Whitney, in one part of his _Emblemes_, uses twelve of Faerni’s fables in succession. Of the fables to which Shakespeare alludes some have been quoted in the former part of this work;—as The Fly and the Candle; The Sun, the Wind, and the Traveller; The Elephant and the undermined Tree; The Countryman and the Serpent. Of others we now proceed to give examples. The Hares biting the dead Lion had, perhaps, one of its earliest applications, if not its origin, in the conduct of Achilles and his coward Greeks to the dead body of Hector, which Homer thus records (_Iliad_, xxii. 37),— “The other sons of the Greeks crowded around; And admired Hector’s stature and splendid form; Nor was there one standing by who did not inflict a wound.” Claude Mignault, in his notes to Alciatus (Emb. 153), quotes an epigram, from an unknown Greek author, which Hector is supposed to have uttered as he was dragged by the Grecian chariot,— “Now after my death ye pierce my body; The very hares are bold to insult a dead lion.” The _Troilus and Cressida_ (act v. sc. 8, l. 21, vol. vi. p. 259) exhibits the big, brutal Achilles exulting over his slain enemy, and giving the infamous order,— “Come, tie his body to my horse’s tail; Along the field I will the Trojan trail.” And afterwards (act v. sc. 10, l. 4, vol. vi. p. 260) the atrocities are recounted to which Hector’s body was exposed,— “He’s dead, and at the murderer’s horse’s tail In beastly sort dragg’d through the shameful field.” The description thus given accords with that of Alciatus, Reusner, and Whitney, in reference to the saying, “We must not struggle with phantoms.” Alciat’s stanzas (Emb. 153) are,— Cum laruis non luctandum.