Aesop
Aesop (also spelled Æsop, from the Greek Αἴσωπος — Aisōpos), known only for his fables, was by tradition a slave who was a contemporary of Croesus and Peisistratus in the mid-6th century BC in Ancient Greece. His fables are still taught as moral lessons and used as subjects for various entertainments, especially children's plays and cartoons. According to tradition he was at one point freed from slavery and eventually died at the hands of Delphians, but nothing is known about Aesop from credible records. In fact, the obscurity shrouding his life has led some scholars to doubt his existence altogether.
Life
The place of Aesop's birth is uncertain – Thrace, Phrygia, Ethiopia, Samos, Athens, Sardis and Amorium all claim the honour. According to the sparse information gathered about him from references to him in several Greek works (he was mentioned by Aristophanes, Plato, Xenophon and Aristotle), Aesop was a slave of a Greek named Iadmon, who resided on the island of Samos. Aesop must have been freed, for he conducted the public defence of a certain Samian demagogue (Aristotle, Rhetoric, ii. 20). He subsequently lived at the court of Croesus, where he met Solon, and dined in the company of the Seven Sages of Greece with Periander at Corinth. During the reign of Peisistratus he was said to have visited Athens, where he told the fable of The Frogs Who Desired a King to dissuade the citizens from attempting to depose Peisistratus for another ruler. A contrary story, however, said that Aesop spoke up for the common people against tyranny through his fables, which incensed Peisistratus, who was against free speech.
Popular stories surrounding Aesop were assembled in a vita prefixed to a collection of fables under his name, compiled by Maximus Planudes, a 14th century monk. He was described as extremely ugly and deformed, which is how he was also represented in a marble figure in the Villa Albani in Rome. This biography had actually existed a century before Planudes. It appeared in a 13th century manuscript found in Florence. However, according to another Greek historian Plutarch's account of the symposium of the Seven Sages, at which Aesop was a guest, there were many jests on his former servile status, but nothing derogatory was said about his personal appearance. Aesop's deformity was further disputed by the Athenians, who erected in his honour a noble statue by the sculptor Lysippus. Some suppose the sura, or "chapter," in the Qur'an titled Luqman to be referring to Aesop, a well-known figure in Arabia during the time of Muhammad.
Aesop was also briefly mentioned in the classic Egyptian myth, "The Girl and the Rose-Red Slippers", considered by many to be history's first Cinderella story. In the myth, the freed slave Rhodophis mentions that a slave named Aesop told her many entracing stories and fables while they were slaves on the island of Samos.
Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables or Aesopica refers to a collection of fables credited to Aesop. Aesop's Fables has also become a blanket term for collections of brief fables, usually involving personified animals. The Fox and the Grapes (from which the idiom "sour grapes" is derived), The Tortoise and the Hare, The North Wind and the Sun and The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf (also known as The Boy Who Cried Wolf), are well-known throughout the world.
Sources
- Caxton, John, 1484. The history and fables of Aesop, Westminster. Modern reprint edited by Robert T. Lenaghan (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1967).
- Bentley, Richard, 1697. Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris... and the Fables of Æsop. London.
- Jacobs, Joseph, 1889. The Fables of Aesop: Selected, Told Anew, and Their History Traced, as first printed by William Caxton, 1484, from his French translation
- i. A short history of the Aesopic fable
- ii. The Fables of Aesop
- Handford, S. A., 1954. Fables of Aesop. New York: Penguin.
- Perry, Ben E. (editor), 1965. Babrius and Phaedrus, (Loeb Classical Library) Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965. English translations of 143 Greek verse fables by Babrius, 126 Latin verse fables by Phaedrus, 328 Greek fables not extant in Babrius, and 128 Latin fables not extant in Phaedrus (including some medieval materials) for a total of 725 fables.
- Temple, Olivia and Robert (translators), 1998. Aesop, The Complete Fables, New York: Penguin Classics. (ISBN 0-14-044649-4)
External links
- Works by Aesop at Project Gutenberg
- Aesopica.net - Over 600 English fables, with Latin and Greek texts also - Searchable
- AesopFables.com - Large collection of fables, but many fables are NOT Aesopic
- Free audiobook of Aesop's Fables from LibriVox
- The Fables - A site primarily for children
- Stories that have been called "modern Aesop Fables"
- Aesop's Fables Illustrated - Simple, elegant illustrations to the Fables