Aesop

Greek sage and fabulist

• Born: c. 620 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Possibly Thrace, Greece
• Died: c. 560 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Possibly Delphi, Greece

Aesop invented fables for the purpose of illustrating a moral (or immoral) lesson. He probably wrote nothing himself but was rather a famous teller of tales that were later set down.

Early Life

Although some scholars claim that he is purely a legendary figure, the following assertions are most often accepted as historically true in the ancient sources pertaining to Aesop (EE-sawp): He originally came from Thrace; he was for a time a slave on the Greek island of Samos, off the coast of Asia Minor, in the service of a man named Iadmon, who later freed him; he was a contemporary of the poet Sappho in the early sixth century b.c.e.; and he was famed as a maker and teller of prose stories.

Later documents add details, of varying degrees of credibility, to Aesop’s biography. For example, The Life of Aesop, apparently written by a Greek-speaking Egyptian in the first century c.e., states that he was very ugly, worthless as a servant, potbellied, misshapen of head, snub-nosed, swarthy, dwarfish, bandy-legged, short-armed, squint-eyed, and liver-lipped. The sources for this late biography may go back as far as the fifth century b.c.e., although that does not guarantee its authenticity. Indeed, its cumulative details relating to Aesop’s life are typically as fanciful and entertaining as the fables attributed to him.

In that entertaining first century biography, Aesop was portrayed as mute until the Egyptian goddess Isis gave him speech in thanks for guiding one of her lost priestesses. Isis and the nine Muses, the patron goddesses of the arts in Greek myth, also gave him the power to conceive stories and the ability to elaborate tales in Greek that would make him famous. Aesop’s sharp wit and inventive imagination contrasted greatly with his grotesque appearance and with the dullness of those about him, both his master and his fellow slaves. Rejected because of his superior intellect and unattractiveness, Aesop soon became the property of a slave dealer, who sold him promptly and cheaply to the pompous philosopher Xanthus on the island of Samos.

Aesop outwitted his master and mistress at every opportunity, usually through his verbal dexterity. There is even an episode in which Aesop had sex ten times with his master’s wife, as a form of revenge. (A general mistrust of women’s fidelity runs throughout the narrative.) Eventually, Xanthus was forced to grant freedom to his troublesome slave, who was the only one able to interpret an omen in which an eagle flies away with the city’s official seal. Aesop interpreted the omen as an indication that powerful King Croesus of Lydia would subjugate the island. The treacherous people of Samos surrendered Aesop to Croesus, but Aesop’s skillful telling of fables so pleased the king that, at Aesop’s request, he did not attack Samos. Aesop then wrote down all the stories and fables that would be attached to his name and deposited them in the king’s library. When he returned to the island, he was richly rewarded for having saved it from invasion. His first act in his newly exalted position on Samos was to erect a shrine to his patron goddesses—the Muses and their mother, Mnemosyne, goddess of memory—thereby insulting the Olympian god Apollo by not honoring him as leader of the Muses.

After many prosperous years in Samos, Aesop set off to see the world. Arriving in Babylon, he won the position of chamberlain to King Lycurgus of Babylon. He enabled Lycurgus to win many contests of wit with other monarchs and thereby to expand his kingdom; the most notable of these contests was with King Nectanabo of Egypt. Lycurgus was so grateful that he ordered the erection of a golden statue of Aesop and held a great celebration in honor of Aesop’s wisdom.

Life’s Work

Late in his life, Aesop wished to go to Delphi, the Greek city that contains the sacred oracle of Apollo. After having sworn to return to Babylon, he journeyed to other cities and gave demonstrations of his wisdom and learning. When he came to Delphi, its people enjoyed hearing him at first, but they gave him nothing. After he insulted the people of Delphi by pointing out that they were the descendants of slaves, they plotted to kill him for damaging their reputation. Their stratagem was to hide a golden cup from Apollo’s temple in Aesop’s baggage and then to convict him of theft from a sacred place, a capital offense. Despite Aesop’s pleas of innocence and his recitation of fables indicating that the Delphians would be harmed by executing him, they stood him on the edge of the cliff at Delphi. Aesop cursed them, called on the Muses to witness that his death was unjust, and threw himself over the cliff. Later, according to the first century biography, when the Delphians were afflicted with a famine, they received an oracle from Zeus, king of the gods, that they should expiate the death of Aesop. The Life of Aesop goes on to say that the peoples of Greece, Babylon, and Samos avenged Aesop’s death, although the mode of vengeance is not specified.

There are several other ancient references to Aesop’s brutal fate at Delphi. For example, the Greek “father of history,” Herodotus, states that Aesop was by birth a Thracian, “the slave of Iadmon, son of Hephaestopolis of Samos. . . . When the Delphians, in obedience to the oracle’s command, repeatedly advertised for someone to claim compensation for Aesop’s murder, the only person to come forward was the grandson of Iadmon.” The greatest fifth century b.c.e. comic playwright, Aristophanes, in his Sphēkes (422 b.c.e.; The Wasps, 1812), refers to the Delphians’ falsely charging Aesop with theft. Perhaps the most memorably moving ancient Greek reference to Aesop occurs in the Phaedōn by the philosopher Plato. Aesop is describing the last day in the life of his beloved teacher Socrates in 399 b.c.e. The Athenians had sentenced Socrates to death for his critical ideas. Socrates had been spending his last hours before execution turning Aesop’s fables into verse. Because no written collection of short fables would have then been available, they must have been part of the common person’s memorized cultural stock. When his friends came to visit Socrates, he wondered if Aesop had ever invented a fable about the connection of pleasure and pain. The second century c.e. Greek historian Plutarch, in his series of short Lives, makes many references to Aesop’s fables when they are relevant to the fates of his biographical subjects. Thus, whether legend or reality, the character of Aesop has been an enduring literary inspiration.

Aesopea (fourth century, b.c.e.; Aesop’s Fables, 1484) represents the literature of the common person, in striking contrast to the aristocratic heroic mode of the dominant Homeric epics, the Iliad (c. 750 b.c.e.; English translation, 1611) and the Odyssey (c. 725 b.c.e.; English translation, 1614). The fables are part of that tradition of folk wisdom carried by the spoken word from generation to generation through such genres as parables and proverbs as well as fables. The form of the Aesopic fable is that of a brief anecdote focused on a single event, designed to teach some principle of successful living. The characters in the fables are typically animals endowed with human speech and personal qualities. Each quality fits the stereotype for that creature; for example, the fox is untrustworthy, the ass stupid, the lamb naïve and helpless, the wolf cruel, the lion noble, the ant industrious. These animals, as well as the people in the fables, become easily recognized images of human types. The concluding moral of each story, often tagged onto the text centuries later, is drawn from common human experience and, therefore, makes an easily understood lesson.

Although Aesop’s language is spare and simple, the ancients did not consider the fables as intended for children. Their point of view is really adult, often satirical, and never sentimental. Aesop, for example, is reputed to have told to the Athenians the story of “The Frogs Who Asked for a King” when they expressed discontent with their ruler. The story tells of some frogs who, bothered at not having a ruler, ask Zeus to send them a king. Realizing their stupidity, Zeus drops a log into their pool. At first, the frogs are frightened and dive to the bottom. Later, when the log floats quietly, they become contemptuous of it and climb over it. Indignant at having such an inactive ruler, the frogs bother Zeus again, asking for a change of rulers. Zeus, now angry with the frogs, this time sends a water snake who catches and eats them. “Better no rule than cruel rule,” says the moral tag. The Aesopic fables are thus typical of that sort of folk literature in which people shrewdly examine their own lives, with abrasive honesty, and thus come to a better understanding of their own follies.

Significance

Many phrases derived from Aesop’s Fables are common expressions in the folk heritage of the English language: “Sour grapes,” “the boy who cried ‘wolf,’” “the wolf in sheep’s clothing,” “fishing in muddy waters,” “out of the frying pan into the fire,” “the dog in the manger,” “the ant and the grasshopper,” “the tortoise and the hare,” and “the goose that laid the golden egg” are some of the better-known examples.

The Greek tradition of telling fables goes back at least as far as Hesiod’s Erga kai Emerai (c. 700 b.c.e.; Works and Days, 1618). Hesiod recounts a brief episode in which a hawk carries off a whimpering nightingale in its cruel claws. The powerful hawk tells the complaining and usually proud nightingale that “I will make a meal of you if I choose, or I will let you go. Foolish is he who would match himself against those who are stronger. . . .” Hesiod’s fable is told as if its content and form are already well known; there were Mesopotamian fables even older than those of the Greeks. Indeed, Aristotle, the great fourth century b.c.e. Greek philosopher, says in his Rhetoric, “Fables are suited to popular oratory and have this advantage that, while historical parallels are hard to find, it is comparatively easy to find fables.”

The first written collection of fables in Greek attributed to Aesop is recorded as having been made by Demetrius of Phalerum in the fifth century b.c.e. Unfortunately, that collection has not survived. The oldest existing collection is a Latin version in verse done by the freedman Phaedrus in the first century c.e. The Latin verse of Phaedrus became the basis for the great seventeenth century French verse fables of Jean de La Fontaine, whose satirical verses are familiar to many generations of French schoolchildren. In the late second century c.e., Babrius made a version in Greek verse, thereby completing the task conceived by Socrates. Prose versions, however, have also survived the ages, dating from at least as far back as the first three centuries of the Christian era, with their roots perhaps extending to Aesop in the sixth century b.c.e. These prose fables are the primary basis of most modern English versions. The fabulist tradition remained alive in the twentieth century United States, with such fable-spinners as James Thurber and Woody Allen reinforcing the Aesopic tradition of satirical folk wisdom.

Bibliography

Aesop. Aesop’s Fables. Translated by Laura Gibbs. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. This compilation of six hundred fables represents all the main collections in ancient Latin and Greek. Fables are arranged according to themes and story elements.

Aesop. The Fables of Aesop: Selected, Told Anew, and Their History Traced by Joseph Jacobus. London: Macmillan, 1894. Reprint. New York: Macmillan, 1950. Skillful retellings of the fables with excellent illustrations and source notes.

Babrius. Fabulae Aesopeae: English and Greek, Babrius and Phaedrus. Edited and translated by Ben Edwin Perry. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990. A scholarly edition of the Greek and Latin texts, together with facing prose translations.

Daly, Lloyd W. Aesop Without Morals: The Famous Fables, and a Life of Aesop. New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1961. This English translation of the Fables includes a translation of the first century c.e.Life of Aesop.

Zafiropoulos, Christos A. Ethics in Aesop’s Fables: The Augustana Collection. Boston: Brill, 2001. Recounts the history of the fable and analyzes the theme of conflict in Aesop’s fables from the perspective of ethical philosophy in ancient Greece. Argues that the fable is a form of ethical reasoning.