Aesop's fables

This is the story of a slave who gained his freedom by captivating his audience with animal tales filled with moral content: "The Fables of Aesop".

The law of the jungle prevails in the world of men

Little is really known about the life of this writer; even some experts maintain that he never actually existed. Nevertheless I'll try to summarize what has been best "accepted" about his time on earth:

Aesop was a 6th century BC warrior, sold into slavery to a citizen of Samos (East of Turkey) called Xanthus. After having earned big reputation for telling astonishing animal tales in important discussions and negotiations - which indeed impressed his listeners - he supposedly gained his freedom. He is attributed with the writing of a compilation of 358 fables, though the inconsistencies found in his characters and settings tend to make us believe that the tales had come from various and different sources.

Fable: narrative form, usually featuring animals that behave and speak as human beings, told in order to highlight human follies and weaknesses. A moral—or lesson for behaviour—is woven into the story and often explicitly formulated at the end.

The idea of representing human types as animals has the advantage of a profound simplicity, but is not simplistic.

Why do we put Aesop under the "tag" of Classical Mythology ? I guess I can point three main reasons:

1- His tales involve the Olympian Gods and Goddesses, and thus some of the things we got to know about Zeus, Hermes or Athena were learnt from him.

2- Just as Ovid told us the story of the first spider (the weaver "Arachne" who made Athena furious and was consequently turned into this 8 legged insect), Aesop had already written similar tales 600 years before: Why does the tortoise carry his "home" in his back ? Because Zeus punished the animal for not attending the God´s wedding party. "I´d rather stay home" were the words who sentenced the tortoise to carry forever his house with him.

3- Many play writers, being Aristophanes at the top of the list, have included Aesop's tales in their plays. It seems that all the audience of that time (-800 to -400 approx) knew these stories by heart.

Coming next is one of Aesop´s fables, but I suggest you read this other posting first: "The power of Allegories"

The ant and the grasshopper

In times of abundance we should plan ahead lest we suffer distress when times change.

During the wintertime, an ant was living off the grain that he had stored up for himself during the summer. The grasshopper came to the ant and asked him to share some of his grain. The ant said to the grasshopper, 'And what were you doing all summer long, since you weren't gathering grain to eat?' The grasshopper replied, 'Because I was busy singing I didn't have time for the harvest.' The ant laughed at the grasshopper's reply, and hid his heaps of grain deeper in the ground. 'Since you sang like a fool in the summer,' said the ant, 'you better be prepared to dance the winter away!'