Aesop's Fables

Aesop's Fables or Aesopica refers to a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and story-teller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC. His fables are some of the most well known in the world. The fables remain a popular choice for moral education of children today. Many stories included in Aesop's Fables, such as The Fox and the Grapes (from which the idiom sour grapes derives), The Tortoise and the Hare, The North Wind and the Sun, The Boy Who Cried Wolf and The Ant and the Grasshopper are well-known throughout the world. Apollonius of Tyana, a 1st century AD philosopher, is recorded as having said about Aesop: ... like those who dine well off the plainest dishes, he made use of humble incidents to teach great truths, and after serving up a story he adds to it the advice to do a thing or not to do it. Then, too, he was really more attached to truth than the poets are; for the latter do violence to their own stories in order to make them probable; but he by announcing a story which everyone knows not to be true, told the truth by the very fact that he did not claim to be relating real events. (Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Book V:14)

About the Author :
Aesop or Esop (620-564 BC), known for the genre of fables ascribed to him, was by tradition born a slave and was a contemporary of Croesus and Solon in the mid-sixth century BC in ancient Greece. Aesop's existence remains uncertain, and no writings by Aesop survive, but numerous fables attributed to him were gathered and set down in writing across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day; various collections under the rubric Aesop's Fables are currently available. In these stories animals speak and have human characteristics; see for example the Tortoise and the Hare or the Ant and the Grasshopper. While the Aesopic fables today are often cast as stories for children, for the early Greeks the fable "was a technique of criticism and persuasion, which by its indirectness might avoid giving offense, while at the same time making a powerful impression by its artistry. It was especially valuable to the weak as a weapon against the powerful." As the legendary creator of fables, quoted by Socrates, Aristophanes, and others, Aesop was highly regarded by the Greeks, despite his origin as a slave. Scattered details of Aesop's life can be found in ancient sources including Aristotle, Herodotus, and Plutarch, and an ancient literary work called The Aesop Romance tells an episodic, probably highly fictional version of his life, including the traditional description of Aesop as strikingly ugly. A later tradition (dating from the Middle Ages) depicts Aesop as a black Ethiopian. Depictions of Aesop in popular culture over the last 2500 years have included several works of art and his appearance as a character in numerous books, films, plays, and television programs.