Aesop

Fabulist

Born: c. 620 b. c.e.; possibly Thrace, Greece Died: c. 560 b. c.e.; possibly Delphi, Greece Category: Poetry; literature

Life Although many Greek cities claim to be the birthplace of Aesop (EE-sahp), most scholars believe he never existed. In a marble figure on the Villa Albani, Paris, he is depicted as a dwarf, deformed and ugly, perhaps to symbolize his near approach to the so-called lower animals and his peculiar sympathy for their habits. Yet history contains a reference to a “noble statue” of him by Lysippus in Athens. Diego Velasquez’s painting presents him as a sturdy figure in a brown cloak.

Many fables, supposedly by Aesop, have been traced to earlier Indian or

Aesop relates his fables. (F. R. Niglutsch)

Aesop. (Library of Congress)

Fourteenth century b. c.e. Egyptian versions. Somebody, however, wrote them down, and this may have been the legendary sixth century b. c.e. slave of Iadmon of Samos. Tradition tells of his travels to Lydia, to meet Solon at the court ofCroesus, and to Periander in Corinth. While visiting Athens, to keep its citizens from deposing Pisistratus, legend has him recounting to them the fable of the frogs who asked for a king.

Phaedrus, a Macedonian freedman of Augustus, translated the fables in

Five volumes of Latin verse. Babrius versified them two centuries later, and Planudes Maximus, a learned thirteenth century Byzantine monk, compiled a collection in prose, prefaced by his account of Aesop’s life.

Influence Children and people of all ages and all ranges of sophistication have enjoyed Aesop’s fables throughout the ages. Jean de La Fontaine gave them their most polished and sophisticated form in his Fables (16681694).

Further Reading

Aesop. Treasury of Aesop’s Fables. Illustrated by Thomas Bewick. 1941.

Reprint. New York: Avenal Books, 1973.

Perry, B. E. Studies in the Text History of the Life and Fables of Aesop.

1936. Reprint. Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1981.

Wheatley, Edward. Mastering Aesop: Medieval Education, Chaucer, and His Followers. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000.

Trevor J. Morgan

See also: Literature; Performing Arts.