The Kite and the Snake

The fable (ainos, mythos, logos) as a form of Greek storytelling is at least as old as Hesiod (Op. 202-212; 8th C) and Archilochus (fr. 174; 7th C), and by the 5th century, we find references in Herodotus (2.134) and Aristophanes to Aesop as a writer of fables, i.e. a logopoios or a mythopoios. Much like the works of Homer, Aesop’s Fables were not at first written and compiled in an authoritative collection, but the name held some generic authority in 5th C Athens. Indeed, Aristophanes’ Birds contains the insult that an ignorant character has not “frequented Aesop” (“οὐδ᾽Αἴσωπον πεπάτηκας”, ll. 471-2). Still, we might more accurately speak of tales in the Aesopic tradition (attributed to Aesop) than of a work called Aesop’s. The tales themselves vary in length, but are generally short, contain personified animals, plants, objects, or gods, and end with a “moral” or lesson that is usually explicitly stated or reinforced. Various authors in antiquity produced their own “collections” of Aesop’s tales, in Latin and Greek, and in the middle ages, the Aesopic fable took on a new life and tradition. Collected here are Greek fables, in prose.

Aesop, like Homer, was probably as mythical as his tales. Although he was widely known and celebrated in the ancient Greek world, his biography has many of the hallmarks of a pseudo-historical folk-hero. There is no agreement on where he was from, he was afflicted with one or more disabilities (e.g. he was mute, ugly and misshapen), and his death is said to have been tragic and noteworthy.

As a writer of fables, he was known already in the 5th C BCE by Herodotus, who believed him (“Αἰσώπου τοῦ λογοποιοῦ”) to have lived in the 6th C and been a slave to a Samian, Iadmon. The historian describes him as a fellow slave (σύνδουλος) of the Thracian Rhodopis, and so perhaps he meant to imply that Aesop, too, was from Thrace, an origin attested elsewhere (cf. Aristot. fr. 573 “ἦν δὲ Αἴσωπος Θρᾷξ”, Suidas Eugeion Samius DFGH 3 “Εὐγείτων δὲ Μεσημβριανὸν εἶπεν”; Αἴσωπος δὲ ὁ λογοποιὸς εὐδοκίμει τότε.; Heracleides DFGH 5 “Ἦν δὲ Θρᾷξ τὸ γένος.”). Still other sources claim he was a Phrygian or a Lydian. There exists an Imperial era biography, in Greek, in the form of a popular, fictionalized novel that consists largely of generic tales of a witty slave outfoxing his master, and then of a wise freedman spreading his wisdom in the form of stories as an advisor to Croesus, the Samians, the Babylonians, and the Egyptians. His death at Delphi at the hands of angry Delphians is well-known (Eusebius places it in 564 BCE; cf. a Greek inscription from 16 CE, found at Rome IG XIV 1297 col. II 15-18). Perry (1952, Aesopica) provides a handy collection of ancient testimonia.