WorldLibsLibrariesBooksVisitGlobeShelfSearch

Aesop's Fables

Aesop, c. 6th c. BCE

Held by Project Gutenberg, PG 21read here

Read it here about 3 h of reading

Add to a shelf
Your shelves
See your shelves

A collection of short animal fables credited to Aesop, the Greek storyteller said to have lived in the sixth century BCE. Each story is a few lines long: a fox gives up on grapes it cannot reach, a tortoise outlasts a hare, the body's members strike against the belly. Most end with a plain moral. The edition here is George Fyler Townsend's translation, which opens with a preface and a life of Aesop and gathers three hundred fables.

Where it happens

  1. Samos Greek island that claims to be Aesop's birthplace in the life that prefaces this edition.3
  2. Sardis Capital of Lydia and one of four places the preface says contend to be Aesop's birthplace.3
  3. Mesembria Ancient colony in Thrace, another claimant to Aesop's birth.3

Through time

  1. 2500 BCFables and proverbs of Aesopic form already exist in Sumer and Akkad, as early as the third millennium BCE.1
  2. 620 BCApproximate birth of Aesop, the Greek fabulist, who is traditionally said to have died around 564 BCE.2
  3. 564 BCApproximate death of Aesop, after which his fables circulate orally for about three centuries.12
  4. 1593Portuguese missionaries print Esopo no Fabulas in Japan, one of the earliest translations of Aesop outside Europe.1
  5. 1965Ben E. Perry's Babrius and Phaedrus argues against Indian origins for the Greek fable tradition.1

Who is in it, and behind it

Aesop author

Greek fabulist and storyteller, c. 620 to 564 BCE, whose existence is unclear and under whose name the fables were gathered.12

George Fyler Townsend translator

Clergyman whose English translation, with a preface and life of Aesop, is the text on this site.3

Herodotus subject

Greek historian who mentions Aesop the fable writer as a slave of the fifth century BCE.1

Socrates subject

In Plato's Phaedo he passes his time in prison putting some of Aesop's fables into verse.1

Apollonius of Tyana subject

First-century philosopher recorded as saying Aesop taught great truths through humble incidents.1

Ben E. Perry subject

Loeb editor who argued in 1965 that no Greek fable comes from an Indian source.1

What it is about

A fable ends in a moral

The animals play fixed types, the fox sly and the lion bold, and the story is told to deliver one lesson.13

Authorship by attribution

Contradictory morals and contradictory ancient biographies suggest Aesop did not originate all the fables credited to him.1

Fables travel between cultures

Aesopic tales have Sumerian and Akkadian parallels and share about a dozen with Indian collections such as the Jataka tales and the Panchatantra.1

From adults to children

The stories began as political and social commentary for adults and became a tool of moral education for children from the Renaissance.1

In its own words

He is neither a narrator, nor an allegorist. He is a great teacher, a corrector of morals, a censor of vice, and a commender of virtue
PREFACE. Townsend's preface sums up what the fabulist is for: a teacher and censor of vice rather than a storyteller. Read on
A HARE one day ridiculed the short feet and slow pace of the Tortoise, who replied, laughing: “Though you be swift as the wind, I will beat you in a race
The Hare and the Tortoise. The best-known race in the collection, short enough to see how a fable sets up its lesson. Read on
THE MEMBERS of the Body rebelled against the Belly, and said, “Why should we be perpetually engaged in administering to your wants, while you do nothing but take your rest, and enjoy yourself in luxury and self-indulgence
The Belly and the Members. A political fable about cooperation, told in a few lines. Read on
A FAMISHED FOX saw some clusters of ripe black grapes hanging from a trellised vine
The Fox and the Grapes. The source of the phrase sour grapes, a full fable in three sentences. Read on
A CROW perishing with thirst saw a pitcher, and hoping to find water, flew to it with delight
The Crow and the Pitcher. A fable of ingenuity rather than vice, with the moral left to the reader. Read on
A DOVE shut up in a cage was boasting of the large number of young ones which she had hatched
The Dove and the Crow. A fable from the second half whose moral turns a boast into a warning. Read on
A FAMISHED WOLF was prowling about in the morning in search of food. As he passed the door of a cottage built in the forest, he heard a Mother say to her child, “Be quiet, or I will throw you out of the window, and the Wolf shall eat you
The Mother and the Wolf. A wolf takes a mother's threat literally, showing how many fables turn on a single misplaced trust. Read on

The shape of the book

318 chapters, 40,201 words. Point at a bar.

How it came to be here

The fables were oral for roughly three centuries after Aesop's death before anyone collected them, and the corpus kept growing, absorbing tales from West Asia and beyond. Manuscripts in Greek and Latin carried them forward, and printing made Aesop one of the earliest titles in many languages. First told to adults on social and political themes, they became a staple of moral teaching for children from the Renaissance on. This site carries the Townsend translation, the English text Project Gutenberg offers as Three Hundred Aesop's Fables.

Free to read elsewhere

Sources

  1. Aesop's Fables (Wikipedia)
  2. Aesop (Wikipedia)
  3. Three Hundred Aesop's Fables, translated by George Fyler Townsend (Project Gutenberg)

Text: PG 21 | translator: George Fyler Townsend. US public domain (Project Gutenberg licence).

Holder's record