Aesop's Fables
Page 5
Further Reading in Oxford World’s Classics
Greek Lyric Poetry, trans, and ed. M. L. West.
Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Robin Waterfield, ed. Carolyn Dewald.
La Fontaine, Jean de, Selected Fables, trans. Christopher Wood, ed. Maya Slater.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. A. D. Melville, ed. E. J. Kenney.
Petronius, The Satyricon, trans, and ed. P. G. Walsh.
The Romance of Reynard the Fox, trans. and ed. Roy Owen.
CHRONOLOGY OF THE FABLES
BCE
8th century
Aesopic fable in Greek poet Hesiod.
7th century
Fables in the Greek poet Archilochus (fragments).
6th century
Formation of Buddhist jataka tales, Indian Panchatantra.
5th century
Writings of Herodotus provide evidence for Aesop; fables
in the Greek comic playwright Aristophanes.
4th century
Socrates ponders Aesop’s fables while awaiting execution
(Plato, Phaedo 60b); fables used by Greek orators
Demades and Demosthenes; fables discussed by Greek
philosopher Aristotle; Demetrius of Phalerum collects
Greek fables?
3rd century
Further collections of fables in Greek?
2nd century
Fable in the Latin poet Ennius.
1st century
Fables in the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, the
Roman poet Horace, and the Roman historian Livy.
CE
1st century
Phaedrus writes Latin fables in verse; Life of Aesop composed?
Babrius writes Greek fables in verse; fables in the
Greek prose writer Plutarch.
2nd century
Fables in Lucian, Achilles Tatius, Athenaeus, Aulus
Gellius, and other writers.
3rd century
Greek fables of the Collectio Augustana.
4th century
Aphthonius writes Greek fables in prose.
5th century
Avianus writes Latin fables in verse.
10th century
‘Romulus’—poems of Phaedrus in prose paraphrase form.
11th century
Ademar adapts ‘Romulus’ (and Phaedrus?) into Latin
prose; ‘Syntipas’—Andreopulus translates Syriac fables
into Greek prose.
12th century
Latin verse fables of Alexander Neckam and Walter of
England; French verse fables of Marie de France.
13th century
Islamic poet Rumi writes fables in Persian verse; Odo of
Cheriton writes fables in Latin prose.
14th century
John of Sheppey writes fables in Latin prose.
15th century
Perotti transcribes Appendix containing Latin fables of
Phaedrus; Bonus Accursius prints anonymous Greek
fables; Steinhowel prints fables in German and Latin;
Caxton prints fables in English.
16th century
Adages of Erasmus; Emblems of Alciato.
17th century
Aesop’s Fables of Roger L’Estrange; fables in French
verse by Jean de La Fontaine.
AESOP’S FABLES
AESOP, THE POPULAR FAVOURITE
Fable 1 (Chambry 96 = Perry 63)
Demades and the Athenians
The orator Demades was trying to address his Athenian audience. When he failed to get their attention, he asked if he might tell them an Aesop’s fable. The audience agreed, so Demades began his story. ‘The goddess Demeter, a swallow, and an eel were walking together down the road. When they reached a river, the swallow flew up in the air and the eel jumped into the water.’ Demades then fell silent. The audience asked, ‘And what about the goddess Demeter?’ ‘As for Demeter,’ Demades replied, ‘she is angry at all of you for preferring Aesop’s fables to politics!’
So it is that foolish people disregard important business in favour of frivolities.
NOTE: Demades (d. 319 BCE) was an Athenian orator and diplomat. Demeter was a Greek agricultural goddess and was of special importance to the Athenians because of the cult of the Eleusinian Mysteries (see Fable 559).
Fable 2 (pseudo-Plutarch, Lives of the Ten Orators 848a = Perry 460)
Demosthenes and the Athenians
They say that during an assembly in Athens, Demosthenes was prevented from making his speech, so he told the audience he wanted to say just a few words. When the audience had fallen silent, Demosthenes began his tale. ‘It was summertime, and a young man had hired a donkey to take him from Athens to Megara. At midday, when the sun was blazing hot, the young man and the donkey’s driver both wanted to sit in the donkey’s shadow. They began to jostle one another, fighting for the spot in the shade. The driver maintained that the man had rented the donkey but not his shadow, while the young man claimed that he had rented both the donkey and all the rights thereto.’ Having told this much of the story, Demosthenes then turned his back on the audience and began to walk away. The Athenians shouted at him to stop and begged him to finish the story. ‘Indeed!’ said Demosthenes. ‘You want to hear all about the donkey’s shadow, but you refuse to pay attention when someone talks to you about serious matters!’
NOTE: Demosthenes (d. 322 BCE) was a renowned orator of fourth-century Athens. Megara is a Greek city on the Saronic Gulf to the west of Athens. The ‘donkey’s shadow’ was an ancient cliché for something of trivial importance (see, for example, Plato, Phaedrus 260c and Aristophanes, Wasps 191),
I · THE FABLES
FABLES ABOUT SLAVES AND MASTERS
Fable 3 (Babrius 100 = Perry 346)
The Wolf, the Dog, and the Collar
A comfortably plump dog happened to run into a wolf. The wolf asked the dog where he had been finding enough food to get so big and fat. ‘It is a man,’ said the dog, ‘who gives me all this food to eat.’ The wolf then asked him, ‘And what about that bare spot there on your neck?’ The dog replied, ‘My skin has been rubbed bare by the iron collar which my master forged and placed upon my neck.’ The wolf then jeered at the dog and said, ‘Keep your luxury to yourself then! I don’t want anything to do with it, if my neck will have to chafe against a chain of iron!’
NOTE: Caxton (3.15) adds this epimythium: ‘Therefore there is no rychesse gretter than lyberte | For lyberte is better than alle the gold of the world.’
Fable 4 (Chambry 264 = Perry 183)
The Onager, the Donkey, and the Driver
An onager saw a donkey standing in the sunshine. The onager approached the donkey and congratulated him on his good physical condition and excellent diet. Later on, the onager saw that same donkey bearing a load on his back and being harried by a driver who was beating the donkey from behind with a club. The onager then declared, ‘Well, I am certainly not going to admire your good fortune any longer, seeing as you pay such a high price for your prosperity!’
NOTE: The onager, or wild ass, once roamed the plains of central Asia. The word onager is from the Greek onos, ‘donkey’, and agros, ‘field’.
Fable 5 (Syntipas 30 = Perry 411)
The Donkey, the Onager, and the Lion
An onager saw a donkey labouring under a heavy load and he made fun of the donkey’s enslavement. ‘Lucky me!’ said the onager. ‘I am free from bondage and do not have to work for anyone else, since I have grass near at hand on the hillsides, while you rely on someone else to feed you, forever oppressed by slavery and its blows!’ At that very moment a lion happened to appear on the scene. He did not come near the donkey since the donkey’s driver was standing beside him. The onager, however, was all alone, so the lion attacked and devoured him.
The story shows that people who are obstinate and insubordinate come to a bad end because they get carried away by their own sense of stubbornness and refuse
to ask others for assistance.
Fable 6 (Phaedrus 4.1 = Perry 164)
The Donkey, the Priests, and the Tambourines
It is not enough that a man who is born under an unlucky star leads an unhappy life: the bitter affliction of his fate pursues him even after he is dead.
The Galli, those priests of the goddess Cybebe, used a donkey to carry their luggage when they went around begging for alms. When their donkey finally died, overcome by work and the whip, they stripped his hide and made themselves some tambourines. When someone asked them what they had done with their darling donkey, the priests replied, ‘He thought that once he died he would get some rest, but he keeps on getting beaten just the same!’
NOTE: For another fable about the Galli, priests of the Anatolian goddess Cybebe (or Cybele), see Fable 244. These priests were famous for their raucous music, including the use of tambourines.
Fable 7 (Phaedrus App. 20 = Perry 548)
Aesop and the Runaway Slave
A slave who was running away from his cruel master happened to meet Aesop, who knew him as a neighbour. ‘What’s got you so excited?’ asked Aesop. ‘Father Aesop—a name you well deserve since you are like a father to me—I’m going to be perfectly frank, since you can be safely trusted with my troubles. There’s plenty of whipping and not enough food. I’m constantly sent on errands out to the farm without any provisions for the journey. If the master dines at home, I have to wait on him all night long; if he is invited somewhere else, I have to lie outside in the gutter until dawn. I should have earned my freedom by now, but my hairs have gone gray and I’m still slaving away. If I had done anything to deserve this, I would stop complaining and suffer my fate in silence. But the fact is that I never get enough to eat and my cruel master is always after me. For these reasons, along with others that it would take too long to tell you, I’ve decided to go wherever my feet will lead me.’ ‘Well,’ said Aesop, ‘listen to what I say: if you must endure such hardship without having done anything wrong, as you say, then what is going to happen to you now that you really are guilty of something?’ With these words of advice, Aesop scared the slave into giving up his plans of escape.
NOTE: There is a promythium appended to the fable in Perotti’s Appendix: ‘The fable shows that you should not add one problem to another.’
Fable 8 (Chambry 164 = Perry 131)
The Jackdaw and the String
A man caught a jackdaw and tied the bird’s foot with a piece of string so that he could give the bird to his child as a present. The jackdaw, however, could not stand to live in human society, so when they let him loose for just a moment, he ran away. But when he got back to his nest, the string became entangled in the branches, so that the jackdaw was unable to fly. As he was dying, the bird said to himself, ‘How stupid of me! Since I could not stand being a slave in human society, I have brought about my own death.’
This story is appropriate for people who want to rescue themselves from some moderate difficulties and, without realizing it, find themselves in even more serious trouble.
Fable 9 (Maximus of Tyre, Orations 19 = Perry 465)
The Butcher, the Shepherd, and the Lamb
A shepherd and a butcher were walking along the road together. They saw a plump little lamb who had wandered away from the flock and had been left behind by his fellow sheep. The shepherd and the butcher both rushed to grab the lamb. This was back in the days when animals spoke the same language as people, so the lamb asked the two men why they wanted to grab him and carry him off. After the lamb found out what they both did, he turned and offered himself to the shepherd. ‘You are nothing but an executioner of sheep,’ he said to the butcher, ‘and your hands are stained with the blood of the flock! This man, on the other hand, rejoices if we thrive and prosper.’
NOTE: Maximus of Tyre was a Greek philosopher and sophist of the second century CE.
Fable 10 (Chambry 273* = Perry 179)
The Donkey and His Masters
There was a donkey who worked for a gardener. Because the gardener made the donkey work very hard but gave him very little food, the donkey prayed to Zeus to take him away from the gardener and give him to another master, so Zeus sent Hermes to sell the donkey to a potter. The donkey also found this situation unbearable, since he was forced to carry even heavier loads than before. He called upon Zeus again, and this time Zeus arranged for the donkey to be purchased by a tanner. When the donkey saw the kind of work the tanner did, he said, ‘Oh, it would have been better for me to have kept on working for my previous masters in a state of starvation! Now I have ended up in a place where I won’t even get a proper burial after I die.’
The story shows that slaves miss their former masters the most when they have had some experience with their new ones.
NOTE: Zeus is the supreme god of the Greek pantheon, and Hermes is his messenger, often serving as Zeus’s agent in earthly affairs. For a similar fable about ever-worsening masters, see Fable 28.
Fable 11 (Phaedrus 1.15 = Perry 476)
The Old Man, the Donkey, and the Pack Saddles
When there is a change in government, nothing changes for the poor folk except their master’s name.
A cowardly old man had led his donkey out to pasture. At the unexpected sound of the enemy approaching, the old man was stricken with terror and tried to persuade the donkey to run away so that he wouldn’t be captured. The donkey obstinately asked the old man, ‘Tell me, do you suppose the victor will make me carry two pack saddles instead of one?’ The old man said he did not think so. ‘I rest my case,’ concluded the donkey. ‘What difference does it make who my master is, if I always carry one saddle at a time?’
Fable 12 (Phaedrus 1.30 = Perry 485)
The Frogs and the Battle of the Bulls
Poor folk suffer when the high and mighty are at war with one another.
A frog looked out from her pond and saw a battle taking place between the bulls. ‘Oh no!’ she said, ‘There is terrible danger in store for us.’ Another frog asked her why she said this, since the bulls were fighting for control of the herd in their home far away from the frogs. The first frog explained, ‘While their habitat may be separate from ours and our species not the same, the bull who is driven from the lordship of the meadow will come to find a secret hiding place here in the marsh, crushing us beneath his heavy hooves. That is why their frenzy is a matter of life and death for us!’
Fable 13 (Babrius 90 = Perry 341)
The Lion and the Fawn
The lion had gone into a raging frenzy. A fawn saw him from the woods and said, ‘Oh, we really are in trouble! Now that the lion is enraged, he will not stop at anything—and he was already more than we could bear even before he went out of his mind!’
FABLES ABOUT ANIMAL KINGS
Fable 14 (Phaedrus 1.5 = Perry 339)
The Lion, the Cow, the She-Goat, and the Sheep
An alliance made with the high and mighty can never be trusted. This little fable proves my point.
A cow and a she-goat and a long-suffering sheep decided to become the lion’s companions. They went into the forest together and there they caught an extremely large stag which they divided into four portions. Then the lion said, ‘I claim the first portion by right of my title, since I am called the king; the second portion you will give me as your partner; then, because I am strongest, the third portion is mine—and woe betide anyone who dares to touch the fourth!’ In this way the wicked lion carried off all the spoils for himself.
NOTE: Sir Roger L’Estrange appends this apt proverb: ‘He that has the Staff in his Hand will be his own Carver.’ In Greek versions of this fable (e.g. Chambry 207), the alliance is between a lion and an onager. For another story about the ‘lion’s share’, see Fable 15 (following).
Fable 15 (Odo 20 = Perry 149)
The Wolf, the Fox, and the Lion Dividing the Spoils
The lion, the wolf, and the fox agreed to go hunting together. The fox caught a goose, the wolf caught a fat ram,
and the lion caught a scrawny cow. Then it was time to eat. The lion told the wolf to divide their catch. The wolf said, ‘Let each one take what he has caught: the lion will take the cow, I’ll take the ram, and the fox will take the goose.’ The lion was enraged and, raising his paw, he used his claws to strip the wolf’s head of all its fur and skin. The lion then ordered the fox to divide the spoils. The fox said, ‘My lord, you should eat as much of the fat ram as you want, since its meat is tender, then you should eat as much of the goose as you want, but you should eat the cow’s flesh only in moderation, since it is so tough. Whatever is left over you can give to us, your servants.’ ‘Well done,’ said the lion. ‘Who taught you how to do such a good job of dividing the spoils?’ The fox said, ‘My lord, I have learned from my associate’s red cap: his excoriated skull provides a very vivid lesson.’