y VI_,
III. i. 343, and _Richard II_, III. ii. 129, we find references to the
fable of "The Countryman and a Snake"; in _2 Henry VI_, III. i. 69, and
_Timon of Athens_, II. i. 28, to "The Crow in Borrowed Feathers"; in _2
Henry VI_, III. i. 77, to "The Wolf in the Sheep's Skin"; in _King
John_, II. i. 139, to "The Ass in the Lion's Skin"; in _Henry V_, IV.
iii. 91, to "The Hunter and the Bear"; in _As You Like It_, I. i. 87, to
"The Dog that Lost his Teeth"; in _All's Well_, II. i. 71, to "The Fox
and the Grapes"; besides a number of slighter and less definite
allusions. The most detailed fable in Shakespeare, that of "The Belly
and the Members," in _Coriolanus_, I. i. 99, is derived, not from
_AEsop_, but from Plutarch's _Life of Coriolanus_.

The traces of the well-known collection of sayings from various writers
called _Sententiae Pueriles_, and of the so-called _Distichs of Cato_,
both of which were commonly read in the second and third years, are only
slight. Battista Spagnuoli Mantuanus, whose _Eclogues_, written about
1500, had become a text-book, is honored with explicit mention as well
as quotation in _Love's Labour's Lost_, IV. ii. 95. Cicero, who was read
from the fourth year, has left his mark on only a phrase or two, in
spite of his importance in Renaissance culture; but Ovid is much more
important. The motto on the title-page of _Venus and Adonis_ is from the
_Amores_, and the matter of the poem is from _Metamorphoses_, X. 519
ff., with features from the stories of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis
(_Meta._ IV. 285 ff.), and the hunting in Calydon (_Meta._ VIII. 270
ff.). Ovid is quoted in Latin in three early plays; and even where a
translation was available, the phrasing of Shakespeare's allusions
sometimes shows knowledge of the original. Most of Ovid had been
translated into English before Shakespeare began to write, and Golding's
version of the _Metamorphoses_ (1567) was used for the references to the
Actaeon myth in _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_, IV. i. 107 ff., and for a
famous passage in _The Tempest_, V. i. 33. Livy, who had been translated
in 1545 according to Malone, seems to have been the chief source of
_Lucrece_, with some aid from Ovid's _Fasti_, II. 721 ff. Among other
Ovidian allusions are those to the story of Philomela, so pervasive in
_Titus Andronicus_; to the Medea myth in four or five passages; to
Narcissus and Echo, Phaeton, Niobe, Hercules, and a score more of the
familiar names of classic