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Aesop (pronounced /ˈiːsɒp/ EE-sop, Greek: Αἴσωπος, Aisōpos, c. 620-564 BCE) was a Greek writer credited with a number of fables. Older spellings of his name have included Esop(e) and Isope. Although his existence remains uncertain and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day. In many of the tales, animals speak and have human characteristics.
av. The
surrealistic portrait of Aesop; the signature BELO
rv. The motives of the animals from his fables
size
- 86 mm, (3⅝“)
weight – 268.40 gr
(9.47 oz)
metal – bronze, mint patina
Scattered details of
Aesop's life can be found in ancient
sources, including Aristotle, Herodotus, and Plutarch. An ancient literary
work called The Aesop Romance tells an episodic, probably highly
fictional version of his life, including the traditional description of him as
a strikingly ugly slave
(δοῦλος)
who by his cleverness acquires freedom and becomes an adviser to kings and
city-states. A later tradition (dating from the Middle Ages) depicts Aesop as a
black Ethiopian. Depictions of Aesop in popular culture over the last 2500
years have included several works of art and his appearance as a character in
numerous books, films, plays, and television programs.
The
name of Aesop is as widely known as any that has come down from Graeco-Roman
antiquity [yet] it is far from certain whether a historical Aesop ever existed
... in the latter part of the fifth century [BCE] something like a coherent
Aesop legend appears, and Samos seems to
be its home.
The earliest Greek
sources, including Aristotle,
indicate that Aesop was born around 620 BCE in Thrace at a site on the Black Sea coast which would later
become the city Mesembria;
a number of later writers from the Roman imperial period (including Phaedrus,
who adapted the fables into Latin), say that he was born in Phrygia. The 3rd-century poet Callimachus called him
"Aesop of Sardis," and the later
writer Maximus of
Tyre called him "the sage of Lydia."
From Aristotle and Herodotus we learn that Aesop was
a slave in Samos and that his masters were first a man named Xanthus and then a
man named Iadmon; that he must eventually have been freed, because he argued as
an advocate for a wealthy Samian; and that he met his end in the city of Delphi. Plutarch
tells us that Aesop had come to Delphi on a diplomatic mission from King Croesus of Lydia, that he insulted the Delphians, was sentenced to death
on a trumped-up charge of temple theft, and was thrown from a cliff (after
which the Delphians suffered pestilence and famine); before this fatal episode,
Aesop met with Periander
of Corinth, where Plutarch has him
dining with the Seven
Sages of Greece, sitting beside his friend Solon, whom he had met in Sardis. (Leslie Kurke suggests that Aesop himself "was a
popular contender for inclusion" in the list of Seven Sages).
Problems of
chronological reconciliation dating the death of Aesop and the reign of Croesus
led the Aesop scholar (and compiler of the Perry Index) Ben Edwin Perry in
1965 to conclude that "everything in the ancient testimony about Aesop
that pertains to his associations with either Croesus or with any of the
so-called Seven Wise Men of Greece must be reckoned as literary fiction,"
and Perry likewise dismissed Aesop's death in Delphi as legendary; but subsequent
research has established that a possible diplomatic mission for Croesus and a
visit to Periander "are consistent with the year of Aesop's death."
Still problematic is the story by Phaedrus which has Aesop in
Along with the
scattered references in the ancient sources regarding the life and death of
Aesop, there is a highly fictional biography now commonly called The Aesop
Romance (also known as the Vita or '|'The Life of Aesop'|' or The
Book of Xanthus the Philosopher and Aesop His Slave), "an anonymous
work of Greek popular literature composed around the second century of our
era....Like The
Alexander Romance, The Aesop Romance became a folkbook, a
work that belonged to no one, and the occasional writer felt free to modify as
it might suit him." Multiple, sometimes contradictory, versions of this
work exist. The earliest known version "was probably composed in the 1st
century CE", but the story "probably circulated in different versions
for centuries before it was committed to writing"; "certain elements
can be shown to originate in the 4th century BCE." Scholars long dismissed
any historical or biographical validity in The Aesop Romance; widespread
study of the work began only toward the end of the 20th century.
In The Aesop
Romance, Aesop is a slave of Phrygian origin on the island of Samos, and
extremely ugly. At first he lacks the power of speech, but after showing
kindness to a priestess of Isis, is granted by the goddess not only speech but
a gift for clever storytelling, which he uses alternately to assist and
confound his master, Xanthus, embarrassing the philosopher in front of his
students and even sleeping with his wife. After interpreting a portent for the
people of Samos, Aesop is given his freedom and acts as an emissary between the
Samians and King Croesus. Later he travels to the courts of (the imaginary)
Lycurgus of Babylon and Nectanabo
of Egypt in a section that appears to borrow heavily from the romance of Ahiqar. The story ends with Aesop's journey to Delphi, where
he angers the citizens by telling insulting fables, is sentenced to death and,
after cursing the people of Delphi, throws himself from a cliff.
Aesop may or may not
have written his fables. The Aesop Romance claims that he wrote them
down and deposited them in the library of Croesus; Herodotus calls Aesop a
"writer of fables" and Aristophanes speaks of
"reading" Aesop, but no writings by Aesop have survived. Scholars
speculate that "there probably existed in the fifth century [BCE] a
written book containing various fables of Aesop, set in a biographical
framework." Sophocles
in a poem addressed to Euripides
made reference to Aesop's fable of the
North Wind and the Sun. Socrates while in prison turned
some of the fables into verse, of which Diogenes Laertius records a small
fragment. The early Roman playwright and poet Ennius also rendered at least one of Aesop's fables in Latin
verse, of which the last two lines still exist.
The body of work
identified as Aesop's Fables was transmitted by a series of authors writing in
both Greek and Latin. Demetrius
of Phalerum made a collection in ten books, probably in prose (Αισοπείων
α) for the use of orators, which has been lost. Next appeared an edition in
elegiac verse, cited by the Suda, but the
author's name is unknown. Phaedrus,
a freedman of Augustus, rendered the fables
into Latin in the 1st century CE. At about the same time Babrius turned the fables into
Greek choliambics. A 3rd century
author, Titianus is said to have rendered the fables into prose in a work now
lost. Avianus (of uncertain date,
perhaps the 4th century) translated 42 of the fables into Latin elegiacs. The
4th century grammarian Dositheus
Magister also made a collection of Aesop's Fables, now lost.
Aesop's Fables
continued to be revised and translated through the ensuing centuries, with the
addition of material from other cultures, so that the body of fables known
today bears little relation to those Aesop originally told. With a surge in
scholarly interest beginning toward the end of the 20th century, some attempt
has been made to determine the nature and content of the very earliest fables
which may be most closely linked to the historic Aesop.
The anonymously
authored Aesop Romance (usually dated to the 1st or 2nd century CE)
begins with a vivid description of Aesop's appearance, saying he was "of
loathsome aspect...potbellied, misshapen of head, snub-nosed, swarthy,
dwarfish, bandy-legged, short-armed, squint-eyed, liver-lipped—a portentous
monstrosity," or as another translation has it, "a faulty creation of
Prometheus when
half-asleep." The earliest text by a known author that refers to Aesop's
appearance is Himerius in the 4th century, who
says that Aesop "was laughed at and made fun of, not because of some of
his tales but on account of his looks and the sound of his voice." The
evidence from both of these sources is dubious, since Himerius lived some 800
years after Aesop and his image of Aesop may have come from The Aesop
Romance, which is essentially fiction; but whether based on fact or not, at
some point the idea of an ugly, even deformed Aesop took hold in popular
imagination. Scholars have begun to examine why and how this "physiognomic
tradition" developed.
A much later
tradition depicts Aesop as a black African from Ethiopia. The presence of such
slaves in Greek-speaking areas is suggested by the fable "Washing
the Ethiopian white" that is ascribed to Aesop himself. This
concerns a man who buys a black slave and, assuming that he was neglected by
his former master, tries very hard to wash the blackness away. But nowhere in
the fable is it suggested that this constitutes a personal reference. The first
known promulgator of the idea was Planudes, a Byzantine scholar of
the 13th century who wrote a biography of Aesop based on The Aesop Romance
and conjectured that Aesop might have been Ethiopian, given his name. An
English translation of Planudes' biography from 1687 says that "his
Complexion [was] black, from which dark Tincture he contracted his Name (Aesopus
being the same with Aethiops)". When asked his origin by a
prospective new master, Aesop replies, "I am a Negro"; numerous illustrations by Francis
Barlow accompany this text and depict Aesop accordingly. But
according to Gert-Jan van Dijk, "Planudes' derivation of 'Aesop' from
'Aethiopian' is...etymologically incorrect," and Frank Snowden says that Planudes'
account is "worthless as to the reliability of Aesop as 'Ethiopian.”
The tradition of
Aesop's African origin was carried forward into the 19th century. The
frontispiece of William Godwin's
Fables Ancient and Modern (1805) has a copperplate illustration of Aesop
relating his stories to little children that gives his features a distinctly
negroid appearance. The collection includes the fable of "Washing the
Blackamoor white", although updating it and making the Ethiopian 'a black
footman'. In 1856 William
Martin Leake repeated the false etymological linkage of
"Aesop" with "Aethiop" when he suggested that the
"head of a negro" found on several coins from ancient Delphi (with
specimens dated as early as 520 BCE) might depict Aesop, presumably to
commemorate (and atone for) his execution at Delphi, but Theodor Panofka supposed the head
to be a portrait of Delphos,
founder of Delphi, a view more widely repeated by later historians.
The idea that Aesop
was Ethiopian has been further encouraged by the presence of camels, elephants,
and apes in the fables, even though these African elements are more likely to
have come from Egypt and Libya than from Ethiopia, and the fables featuring
African animals may have entered the body of Aesopic fables long after Aesop
actually lived. Nevertheless, in 1932 the anthropologist J.H. Driberg,
repeating the Aesop/Aethiop linkage, asserted that, while "some say he
[Aesop] was a Phrygian...the more general view...is that he was an
African", and "if Aesop was not an African, he ought to have
been;" and in 2002 Richard A. Lobban cited the number of African animals
and "artifacts" in the Aesopic fables as "circumstantial
evidence" that Aesop may have been a Nubian folkteller.
Popular perception
of Aesop as black may have been further encouraged by a perceived similarity
between fables of the trickster Br'er Rabbit, told by
African-American slaves, and the traditional role of the slave Aesop as 'a kind
of culture hero of the oppressed, and the Life [of Aesop] as a
how-to handbook for the successful manipulation of superiors.' This is
reinforced by the 1971 TV production Aesop's Fables in which Bill Cosby played Aesop. In this
mixture of live action and animation, two black children wander into an
enchanted grove, where Aesop tells them fables that differentiate between
realistic and unrealistic ambition. His version there of the
Tortoise and the Hare illustrates how to take advantage of an
opponent's over-confidence.
On other continents
Aesop has occasionally undergone a degree of acculturation. This is evident in
Isango
Portobello's 2010 production of the play Aesop's Fables at
the Fugard Theatre in Cape Town, South Africa. Based on
a script by British playwright Peter Terson (1983), it was
radically adapted by the director Mark Dornford-May as a musical using native
African instrumentation, dance and stage conventions. Although Aesop is
portrayed as Greek, and dressed in the short Greek tunic, the all-black
production contextualises the story in the recent history
of South Africa. The former slave, we are told 'learns that liberty
comes with responsibility as he journeys to his own freedom, joined by the
animal characters of his parable-like fables'. One might compare with this
Brian Seward's Aesop's Fabulous Fables (2009), which first played in
Singapore with a cast of mixed ethnicities. In it Chinese theatrical routines
are merged with those of a standard musical.
There had already
been an example of Asian acculturation in 17th century Japan. There Portuguese
missionaries had introduced a translation of the fables (Esopo no Fabulas,
1593) that included the biography of Aesop. This was then taken up by Japanese
printers and taken through several editions under the title Isopo Monogatari.
Even when Europeans were expelled from Japan and Christianity proscribed, this
text survived, in part because the figure of Aesop had been assimilated into
the culture and depicted in woodcuts as dressed in Japanese costume.
Ancient sources
mention two statues of Aesop, one by Aristodemus and another by Lysippus, and Philostratus describes a painting
of Aesop surrounded by the animals of his fables, none of which have survived.
Early on, the perennial representation of Aesop as an ugly slave emerged.
Another recurrent motif is the love story of the slaves Aesop and Rhodopis. The
tradition which makes Aesop a black African has resulted in several such
depictions, ranging from 17th century engravings to television portrayal by a
black comedian. Some feature combinations of these motifs, or eschew them
altogether (as in the portrayal of Aesop in The Bullwinkle Show. In
general, beginning in the 20th century, plays have shown Aesop as a slave, but
not ugly, while Hollywood movies and television shows have depicted him as
neither ugly nor a slave.
In 1843, the
archaeologist Otto Jahn suggested that Aesop
was the person depicted on a Greek red-figure cup, c.450 BCE, in the Vatican Museums. Paul Zanker
describes the figure as a man with "emaciated body and oversized
head...furrowed brow and open mouth", who "listens carefully to the
teachings of the fox sitting before him. He has pulled his mantle tightly
around his meager body, as if he were shivering...he is ugly, with long hair,
bald head, and unkempt, scraggly beard, and is clearly uncaring of his
appearance."
Some archaeologists
have suggested that a Hellenistic statue of a bearded man with a deformed torso
in the Villa Albani in Rome depicts
Aesop; but as François Lissarrague points out, "It could be the realistic
portrait of some individual unknown to us, or an expressive portrait like
others known to exist in Hellenistic art. The sole argument advanced to
identify the fabulist in this work is the facial expression: He looks
intelligent. Admittedly, this evidence is a bit meager."
Aesop also began to
appear early in literary works. The 4th century BCE Athenian playwright Alexis put Aesop on the stage in his comedy
"Aesop", of which a few lines survive (Athenaeus 10.432); conversing
with Solon, Aesop praises the Athenian practice of adding water to wine. Leslie
Kurke suggests that Aesop may have been "a staple of the comic stage"
of this era.
The 3rd century BCE
poet Poseidippus
of Pella wrote a narrative poem entitled "Aesopia" (now
lost), in which Aesop's fellow slave Rhodopis
(under her original name Doricha) was frequently mentioned, according to Athenaeus 13.596. Pliny would
later identify Rhodopis as Aesop's lover, a romantic motif that would be
repeated in subsequent popular depictions of Aesop.
Aesop plays a fairly
prominent part in Plutarch's
conversation piece "The Banquet of the Seven Sages" in the 1st
century CE and is there identified as the teller of amusing but moralistic
fables. The fabulist then makes a cameo appearance in the novel A True Story
by the 2nd-century satirist Lucian; when
the narrator arrives at the Island of the Blessed, he finds that "Aesop
the Phrygian was there, too; he acts as their jester."
Beginning with the Heinrich
Steinhowel edition of 1476, many translations of the fables into
European languages, which also incorporated Planudes' Life of Aesop, featured
illustrations depicting him as a hunchback. The 1687 edition of Aesop's
Fables with His Life: in English, French and Latin included 28 engravings
by Francis
Barlow which show him as a dwarfish hunchback, and his facial
features appear to accord with his statement in the text (p. 7), "I
am a Negro".
The Spaniard Diego Velázquez painted a
portrait of Aesop, dated 1639-40 and now in the collection of the Museo del Prado. The presentation
is anachronistic and Aesop, while arguably not handsome, displays no physical
deformities. It was partnered by another portrait of Menippus, a satirical philosopher
equally of slave-origin. A similar philosophers series was painted by fellow
Spaniard Jusepe de
Ribera, who is credited with two portraits of Aesop. "Aesop,
poet of the fables" is in the El Escorial gallery and pictures him as an
author leaning on a staff by a table which holds copies of his work, one of
them a book with the name Hissopo on the cover. The other is in the Museo de
Prado, dated 1640-50 and titled "Aesop in beggar’s rags". There he is
also shown at a table, holding a sheet of paper in his left hand and writing
with the other. While the former hints at his lameness and deformed back, the
latter only emphasises his poverty.
In 1690, French
playwright Edmé Boursault's
Les fables d'Esope (later known as Esope à la ville) premiered in
Paris. A sequel, Esope à la cour (Aesop at Court), was first performed in
1701; drawing on a mention in Herodotus 2.134-5 that Aesop had once been owned
by the same master as Rhodopis,
and the statement in Pliny 36.17 that she was Aesop's concubine as well, the
play introduced Rodope as Aesop's mistress, a romantic motif that would be
repeated in later popular depictions of Aesop.
Sir John Vanbrugh's comedy
"Aesop" premiered at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, London, in 1697
and was frequently performed there for the next twenty years. A translation and
adaptation of Boursault's Les fables d'Esope, Vanbrugh's play depicted a
physically ugly Aesop acting as adviser to Learchus, governor of Cyzicus under
King Croesus, and using his fables to solve romantic problems and quiet
political unrest.
In 1780, the
anonymously authored novelette The
History and Amours of Rhodope was published in London. The story casts the
two slaves Rhodope and Aesop as unlikely lovers, one ugly and the other
beautiful; ultimately Rhodope is parted from Aesop and marries the Pharaoh of
Egypt. Some editions of the volume were illustrated with an engraving by Francesco
Bartolozzi of a work by the painter Angelica
Kauffmann. Titled "The beautiful Rhodope in love with
Aesop", it pictures Rhodope leaning on an urn; she holds out her hand to
Aesop, who is seated under a tree and turns his head to look at her. His right
arm rests on a cage of doves, towards which he gestures. There is some
ambiguity here, for while the cage suggests the captive state of both of them,
a raven perched outside the cage may allude to his supposed colour. In fact,
the whole picture is planned to suggest how different the couple are. Rhodope
and Aesop lean on opposite elbows, gesture with opposite hands, and while
Rhodope's hand is held palm upwards, Aesop's is held palm downwards. She stands
while he sits; he is dressed in dark clothes, she in white.
In 1844, Walter
Savage Landor, who wrote Imaginary
Conversations, published two fictional dialogues between Aesop and
Rhodope.
Abandoning the
perennial image of Aesop as an ugly slave, the movie Night in Paradise
(1946) cast Turhan Bey in the role, depicting
Aesop as an advisor to King Croesus who
falls in love with the king's intended bride, a Persian princess played by Merle Oberon. There was also the
1953 teleplay "Aesop and Rhodope" by Helene Hanff, broadcast on Hallmark
Hall of Fame with Lamont Johnson playing Aesop.
"A raposa e
as uvas" ("The Fox and the Grapes"), a play in three acts
about the life of Aesop by Brazilian dramatist Guilherme
Figueiredo, was published in 1953 and has been performed in many
countries, including a videotaped production in China in 2000 under the title Hu
li yu pu tao or 狐狸与葡萄.
Beginning in 1959,
animated shorts under the title "Aesop and Son" appeared as a
recurring segment in the TV series Rocky
and His Friends and its successor, The Bullwinkle Show. The image of Aesop as
ugly slave was abandoned; Aesop (voiced by Charles Ruggles), a Greek
citizen, would recount a fable for the edification of his son, Aesop Jr., who
would then deliver the moral in the form of an atrocious pun. Aesop's 1998
appearance in the episode "Hercules and the Kids" in the animated TV
series Hercules (voiced by Robert Keeshan) amounted to
little more than a cameo.
Occasions on which
Aesop is portrayed as black include Richard Durham's "Destination
Freedom" radio show broadcast (1949), where the drama "The Death of
Aesop," portrays him as an Ethiopian. In 1971, Bill Cosby played Aesop in the TV
production Aesop's Fables.
The musical Aesop's
Fables by British playwright Peter Terson was first produced
in 1983. In 2010, the play was staged at the Fugard Theatre in Cape Town, South
Africa with Mhlekahi Mosiea in the role of Aesop.