The Dog and its Shadow

A dog was crossing a bridge over a stream with a piece of flesh in his mouth when it saw its own shadow in the water and took it for that of another dog, with a piece of meat seemingly double its own in size.

It immediately let go of its own, and fiercely attacked the other dog to get the larger piece from him. It thus lost both: that which it grasped at in the water, because it was a shadow; and its own, because the stream swept it away.