Who was Aesop?
The name Aesop is derived from the Greek word Aethiop
which means Ethiopia.
Aesop was a Greek (or Ethiopian) scholar and story-teller. He is thought to have lived between 620 and 560 B.C. The book of tales written by Aesop, 'Book of Fables' is popularly known as Aesop's Fables or Aesopica and date back to 5 B.C.
Aesop was a slave. It is said that he came from Ethiopia and lived as a slave to Xanthus in the Island of Samos (a Greek
island in the eastern Aegean Sea). According to the historian, Herodotus Aesop gained freedom from slavery by his wise way of fable telling.
In the 13th century, Maximus Planudes,
a Byzantine scholar, translator, editor, and monk accounted for Aesop’s life (biography)
in Constantinople . In his work, Planudes has described Aesop as an ugly and deformed dwarf. A marble statue of Aesop in Villa Albani, Rome
About the Fables
The Aesopica is a collection of fables with various animal and birds as characters; each with a moral ending. The theme in the stories appeal children and adults alike with their humour and moral bindings.
Like the ancient Indian classics, Panchatantra and its successive works the Hitopadesha and Jataka, the Aesop's fables are structured around a mix of human and animal characters. The animals and birds in the stories are associated with certain traits which enable easy visualisation and associative learning. Each tale concludes with a moral.
The morals and proverbial sayings in the Aesop's Fables are stood the test of time. They have been told, and retold over the generations and continue to hold their meaning in contemporary times as well.
In 1484, Aesop's fables were first translated in English by William Caxton from his own work which was originally translated in French by Greeks.
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