Aesop
From Philosopedia
- Villa Albani Collection
Aesop (6th Century B.C.E.)
Herodotus wrote that Aesop, a legendary Greek fabulist, was a slave who lived in Samos and was eventually set free by his master. Others hold that Aesop was the first major African writer and one of the first literary moralists. His fables, stories about animals which illustrate a moral lesson, include “The Tortoise and the Hare,” “The Fox and the Grapes,” and “The Boy Who Cried ‘Wolf.’ ” As the above Roman sculpture indicates, Aesop was thought to have been ugly and deformed.
Contrary to what is found in numerous sophomore essays, according to one Manhattan wag, the fables were not written by Aesophogus. In 1998, in their new translation of the fables, Olivia and Robert Temple wrote that “the fables are not the pretty purveyors of Victorian morals that we have been led to believe. They are instead savage, coarse, brutal, lacking in all mercy or compassion.” Examples:
- THE CAMEL WHO SHAT IN THE RIVER
- A camel was crossing a swiftly flowing river. He shat and immediately saw his own dung floating in front of him, carried by the rapidity of the current. “What is that there?” he asked himself. “That which was behind me I now see pass in front of me.” This applies to a situation where the rabble and the idiots hold sway rather than the eminent and the sensible.
- THE BEAVER
- The beaver is a four-footed animal who lives in pools. A beaver’s genitals serve, it is said, to cure certain ailments. So when the beaver is spotted and pursued to be mutilated—since he knows why he is being hunted—he will run for a certain distance, and he will use the speed of his feet to remain intact. But when he sees himself about to be caught, he will bite off his own parts, throw them, and thus save his own life. Among men also, those are wise who, if attacked for their money, will sacrifice it rather than lose their lives.
{Harper’s Magazine, June 1998;
