Aesop (c. 620–564 BCE) was a Greek storyteller. His existence remains unclear and no writings by him survive. A probably highly fictional version of his life describes him as a strikingly ugly slave who by his cleverness acquired freedom and became an adviser to kings and city-states.
Aesop’s Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables that originally belonged to oral tradition and were not collected for some three centuries after Aesop’s death. By that time, a variety of other stories, jokes and proverbs were being ascribed to him. For many centuries the main transmission of Aesop’s fables across Europe remained in Latin or else orally in various vernaculars, where they mixed with folk tales derived from other sources.
Translated by George Fyler Townsend.
Image painting by Diego Velázquez.
