THE LIFE OF AESOP

   The original Aesop is a figure clouded in so much mystery
and legend that it is difficult to know what can be said about
him.

   The best evidence we have on Aesop's life comes from
offhand remarks in early ancient sources like Herodotus,
Aristotle, Aristophanes and Plato.  Perhaps it is most notable
that Socrates is said to have passed his time awaiting
execution by putting Aesop's fables into verse.  As it is
unlikely that the early remarks on Aesop have no foundation in
reality, it can cautiously be said that Aesop was probably a
slave in the sixth century B.C., that he probably came from
Phrygia and then lived in Samos, that he had a knack for
"fables" (logoi) and that he became famous and gained his
freedom on this account.  The story that he was put to death
by being pushed off a cliff in Delphi because he insulted the
Delphians is already current in the fifth century B.C.

   Beyond this, it is difficult to say much about the actual
Aesop.  Especially as he quickly becomes a mythical figure to
whom fables are automatically ascribed, much in the way that
we automatically ascribe nursery rhymes to Mother Goose.

   Though the real Aesop is likely to remain obscure and
inacessible, there is a famous LIFE OF AESOP which has 
been popular reading for thousands of years and exists in a
fascinating, if sometimes bewildering, array of variants.  Up
until the nineteenth century, it was believed that this
biography was invented by Maximus Planudes, a monk of
Constantinople, in the fourteenth century.  While this view of
the origin of the LIFE OF AESOP is still sometimes 
expressed, it is no longer viable, as Ben Edwin Perry has 
edited an ancient version of THE LIFE which dates from 
Roman times, a thousand years before Maximus himself existed.

   Perry's work shows that the LIFE OF AESOP is an ancient
book, but beyond this it is difficult to say.  M.L. West has
suggested that a prototype of the book existed by the end of
the fifth century B.C. and a German scholarship once held that
it began as an Ionian "folkbook" in the sixth century B.C. 
Whatever one decides in this regard, much of the material in
the book is very old.  The fables it contains are, for
example, primarily 'aetiological' fables which are intended to
explain the causes of particular natural phenomena occur. 
One, for example, explains that weeds grow so much better than
domesticated plants because they are the natural offspring of
the Earth and she favours them, just as a mother will
naturally favour her own children over children others ask her
to tend. The moral fables we ourselves associate with Aesop
(fables which teach us how we should behave) are, in contrast,
less prominent.

   While the story in the LIFE OF AESOP (which has, in 
its earliest version, the title "THE BOOK OF XANTHUS 
THE PHILOSOPHER AND HIS SLAVE AESOP") cannot with 
confidence be said to reflect Aesop's actual life, it is an 
intriguing read. It tells how Aesop was an ugly slave who 
could not speak but was granted the power to speak in return
for his generosity to one of the god Isis' attendants.  He 
then engineers his way to Samos, where he becomes the slave 
of the philosopher Xanthus. There follow a series of wild 
stories, witty fables and a few improper episodes which 
demonstrates, above all else, that Aesop is smarter than 
Xanthus.  His cleverness is on one occasion demonstrated by 
his ability to find a way to save Xanthus from a foolish 
wager he makes at a party, where he bets that he can drink 
the sea dry.  When the man who has bet against him (and is 
eagerly awaiting his reward) agrees that Xanthus need only 
drink the sea dry (and not a drop of water from elsewhere) 
the bet is rendered null and void because he cannot stop all 
the rivers from flowing into it.

   The different versions of the LIFE result both because 
its many different editors and publisher tell the same story 
in different words, and because they sometimes eliminate
incidents they regard as improper (some very adult jokes, for
example).  Certainly the book has the flavour of a Roman
satire and has in view of this tried the patience of many. 
There exasperation with the book is reflected in
pronouncements like the Reverend George Fyler Townsend's
nineteenth century remark that "This life by Planudes
contains... so small an amount of truth, and is so full of
absurd pictures of the grotesque deformity of Aesop, of
wondrous apocryphal stories, of lying legends, and gross
anachronisms, that it is now universally condemned as false,
puerile, and unathentic.  It is given up in the present day
and unworthy of the slightest credit." (THREE HUNDRED 
AESOP'S FABLES, London: George Routledge & Sons, 1867, 
p. xxviii)

   One might nevertheless answer that the LIFE OF AESOP 
still makes entertaining reading, something that explains 
which it has been continuously in print for more than two 
thousand years (a publication history that rivals that of 
almost any book). For those interested in THE LIFE OF 
AESOP, the most accurate translation is in Lloyd Daly, 
AESOP WITHOUT MORALS (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1961). 
La Fontaine's version of Planudes account is also available 
in many editions.  One will find many other variants in 
traditional collections of fables -- so *many* that Sir 
Roger L'Estrange already complained in the preface to his 
1692 version that the LIFE OF AESOP had been "dress'd up" 
in so many different ways that it is impossible to say 
anything with certainty on the subject.


	Leo Groarke Wilfrid
	Laurier University

	Feb 18, 1998