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Aesop and his fables
03-02-2013 11:01Aesop was a story teller with numerous tales credited to him now collectively known as Aesop's Fables. His fables are moralizing stories, many of them involving animals as characters in attempt to show in superlative the true nature of one’s character and perhaps give us a lesson.
According to the earliest Greek sources Aesop was born around 620 BC possibly in Thrace and then taken as a slave to the island of Samos. Although many more Greek cities claim to be the birthplace of Aesop, there are many scholars who believe that he never existed.
He was said to have earned his freedom through his cleverness and lived afterward at the court of King Croesus of Sardis where legend has him meeting Solon. He also visited the court of Periander in Corinth and Athens. On a visit to the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, Aesop openly criticized the greed of the priests there, who murdered him in their anger, circa 560 B.C.
One of the best known of Aesop’s fables tells the story of a race between the tortoise and the hare. The overconfident hare, stopping to nap in the middle of the race, loses to his slower but steadier opponent.
He is usually depicted as a dwarf, deformed and ugly. Yet history contains a reference to a “noble statue” of him erected in Athens. Diego Velasquez’s painting presents him as a sturdy figure in a brown cloak.
During Roman Era, Phaedrus of Augustus, translated the fables in Latin in five volumes and later a Byzantine monk compiled them in a collection. Jean de La Fontaine gave Aesop’s fables their most polished and sophisticated form in the 16th century. Children and people of all ages have enjoyed throughout the ages his fables.
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