Aesop

Aesop conversing with a Dog

Aesop was the semi-legendary teller of fables attributed to him which go by the name of Aesop’s Fables. Lots of children have read those fables as children but in antiquity they were commonly quoted and used by everyone and have since then merged into the collective memory of all mankind.

I mentioned above that Aesop is semi-legendary. I do this because, although it appears that Aesop really did exist much of what passes for his biography and what fables are attributed to him seems to be complete legend.

For example the only surviving “Life” of Aesop from antiquity is an amusing but highly dubious collection of stories called The Life of Aesop.1

Thus the life describes Aesop has:

Aesop (according to Planudes, Cameraius and others) was by Birth, of Ammorius, a Town in the greater Phrygia; (though some will have him to be a Thracian, others a Samian) of a mean Con-dition, and his Person deformed, to the highest degree: Flat-nos'd,hunch-back'd, blobber-lipp'd; a long mishapen Head; his Bodycrooked all over, big-belly'd, badger-legg'd, and his Complexion so swarthy, that he took his very Name from't; for Aesop is the same with Aethiop. And he was not only unhappy in the most scandalous Figure of a Man, that ever was heard of; but he was in a manner Tongue-ty'd too, by such an Impediment in his Speech, that People could very hardly understand what he said.2

According to the tale Aesop by his kindness was healed by the prayers of certain Priests so that he could speak. By his wits he saved some of his fellow slaves from punishment and also pissed off his master so he was sold in Ephesus to the Philosopher Xanthus and taken to live in Samos.3

The account then describes how Aesop by various means outwitted his master and mistress and eventually obtained his freedom. He then proceeded to tour various parts of the Middle East meeting the famous and telling his fables. He adopted a ungrateful young man named Ennus as his son and finally met his death at the hands of the inhabitants of Delphi who unjustly accused him of sacrilege.4 Afterwards the Delphians were punished:

The Delphians soon after this, were visited with Famine and Pestilence, to such a degree, that they went to consult the Oracle of Apollo to know what Wickedness it was had brought these Calamities upon them. The Oracle gave them this Answer, that they were to expiate for the Death of Aesop. In the Conscience of their Barbarity, they erected a Pyramid to his Honour, and it is upon Tradition, that a great many of the most eminent Men among the Greeks of the tragical End of Aesop, to learn the Truth of the History; and found upon Enquiry, that the principal of the Conspirators had laid violent Hands upon themselves.5

How much of this is to be taken seriously? Not very much.

For example although the most common view in antiquity was that Aesop was a Phrygian According to the Greek Philosopher Aristotle and the historian Herodotus he was actually a Thracian from the town of Mesembria. He seems to have lived in the late 7th and first half of the 6th century B.C.E., and may have died c. 564 B.C.E. He does seem to have spent much of his life in Samos and was also probably a slave for some time before being freed. Aesop was also likely misshapen to some extent although the accounts we have likely exaggerate.6

Herodotus mentions that Aesop, probably captured in war, was a slave of a man named Iadmon, not Xanthus, who also owned the notorious courtesan and fellow Thracian Rhodopis. Herodotus also mentions the story of the Delphians killing Aesop.7

It is virtually certain that the story of Aesop’s death given above is an invention and bottom line is we have no idea when and how Aesop died.8

It appears that in life Aesop acted as a clerk / Secretary for his master and negotiated on his behalf, further that he was in the habit of making his points by telling short fables. The wit and cleverness of these tales soon gave Aesop a reputation for intelligence.9

In fact it appears that after he was freed Aesop seems to have been a respected figure in Samos. Aristotle preserves the story that Aesop was called upon to defend a local politician accused of corruption and on trial for his life Aesop told the following story:

Aesop was defending a demagogue at Samos who was on trial for his life when he told this story: ‘A Fox was crossing a river but she got swept by the current into a gully. A long time passed and she couldn’t get out. Meanwhile, there were ticks swarming all over the fox’s body, making her quite miserable. A hedgehog wandered by and happened to see the fox. He took pity on her and asked if he should remove the ticks, but the fox refused. The hedgehop asked the reason why, and the fox replied, “These ticks have taken their fill of me and are barely sucking my blood at this point, but if you take these ticks away, others will come and those hungry new ticks will drink all the blood I have left!” And the same is true for you, people of Samos: this man will do you no harm since he is already wealthy, but if you condemn him to death, others will come who do not have any money, and they will rob you blind!’10

The Politician was spared.

Now it does appear that after Aesop death all sorts of tales and saying were attributed to Aesop. This includes tales from Egypt, Iraq, Asia Minor, India and of course Greece and Italy.11

Now we know from Herodotus and from Aristophanes that knowledge of Aesop’s fables was pretty widespread by the end of the 5th century before Christ in fact Aristophanes mentions Aesop a couple of times in his plays including this section of his play The Birds:

Peisthetaerus: Oh, how I grieve for you birds: once you were kings!
Chorus Leader: Kings? Of what?
Peisthetaerus: Of all creation. Of me, of him, of Zeus himself. Before Kronos and the Titans, before Earth itself, you existed.
Chorus Leader: Before Earth itself?
Peisthetaerus: Yes, indeed.
Chorus Leader: That’s news to me.
Peisthetaerus: Then you must be very unobservant, or very uneducated: you don’t know your Aesop. According to him, surely, the Lark was the first of all the birds to be born, and this was before Earth existed: so when her father took sick and died, what was the poor creature to do, with no Earth to bury him in? He lay in state for four days and then she buried him in her own head.
Euelpides: What a Lark!12

It appears by then that collections of Aesop’s fables were circulating, probably in very small collections of a few fables attributed to him written up.13

The first large collection of Aesop’s Fables was put together in the late 4th century B.C.E., by a Demetrius of Phalerum who wrote a book called the Aisopeia. Although it as not survived it appears to have been the main source for the many anonymous collections of fables that circulated.14

Later Greco-Roman writers like Phaedrus, Babrius, Aphthonius, Avianus compiled collections of Aesop’s Fables. An 11th century C.E. writer called Syntipas also preserved a collection of fables attributed to Aesop.15

The fables themselves in their original form are coarse, full of mockery, derision and gloating over the misfortunes of others. In other words they are frequently very cruel. As one book states:

The underlying ethos of the world of Aesop is ‘you’re on your own, and if you meet people who are unfortunate, kick them while they are down’.16

Another fact to remember is that the moral that appears at the end of most of Aesop’s Fables were added later on and did not exist in any of the original stories.17

A few examples of less familiar Aesop’s Fables:

The Dog and the Hare

A hunting hound seized a hare and attempted both to bite it and lick its chops at the same time. The hare tired of this and said: ‘Hey you, either bite me or kiss me, so that I can know whether you are enemy or friend.’18

The Shepherds, the Lambs, and the Wolf

This is one of Aesop’s fables. A wolf saw some shepherds eating a lamb in their tent. He approached the shepherds and said, ‘Why, what a great uproar there would be if I were to do the same thing!’19

The Bees and Zeus

Begrudging the honey they gave to men, the bees went to Zeus to ask him to give them the power to kill with their stings anyone approaching their honeycombs. Indignant at their envy, Zeus condemned the bees to lose their sting-barbs every time they stung someone, and to die as a result.20

Prometheus and the Tears

This is also something that Aesop said. The clay which Prometheus used when he fashioned man was not mixed with water but with tears. Therefore, one should not try to dispense entirely with tears since they are inevitable.21

It would be of interest to know what sort of tales the real Aesop told, but we are unlikely to know what if any of the tales attributed to him he in fact ever told. Still it is an achievement to be associated with a very large collection of interesting and edifying stories and jokes. I frankly suspect the real Aesop would have been pleased.22

1. A copy of The Life of Aesop can be found Here.

2. IBID, Ch. 1.

3. IBID, Ch. 4.

4. IBID, Ch. 5-19.

5. IBID, Ch. 19.

6. Aesop, Aesop: The Complete Fables, Penguin Books, London, 1998, pp. ix-xi, hereafter called Aesop 1, Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002, pp. ix-xi, hereafter called Aesop 2, Herodotus, The Histories, Anchor Books, New York, 2007, Book 2, s. 134.

7. IBID, Herodotus.

8. IBID, Note 2.134.4a, See also Aesop 1, Aesop 2, ix-x.

9. IBID, Aesop 1.

10. Aesop 2, Fable 29, pp. 18-19, from Aristotle, Rhetoric, Book 2, s. 20.

11. Aesop 1, pp. xix-xxiii, Aesop 2, xx-xxix, xxxvi-xxxix.

12. Aristophanes, Aristophanes: The Knights / Peace / The Birds / The Assemblywomen / Wealth, Penguin Books, London, 1978, Lines 471-483, pp. 170-171.

13. Aesop 2, pp. x-xi. claims there was no written collections at this time. I find this unlikely I suspect though no large collection of such tales existed only a few collections of a few of the fables, but no large comprehensive collection.

14. Aesop 2, pp. xx-xxi.

15. IBID, pp. xxi-xxv.

16. Aesop 1, pp. xvii.

17. Aesop 2, xiii-xiv.

18. Aesop 1, Fable 182, p. 134. I have decided to exclude the moral and let the tales stand on their own.

19. Aesop 2, Fable 392, p. 183.

20. Aesop 1, Fable 234, p. 173.

21. Aesop 2, Fable 516, p. 238.

22. The two best recent readily available collections of Aesop’s fables are Aesop 1, (358 fables) and Aesop 2, (600 fables). See also Aesopica, Here, and Aesop’s Fables, Here.

Pierre Cloutier

Around Africa according to Herodotus

Some of the most amazing feats of exploration are very poorly known. For example it appears that the first circumnavigation of Africa was achieved some time during the reign of Pharaoh Necho II of the Saite dynasty, (610-595 B.C.E.).1 Herodotus describes the voyage as follows:

For it is clear that Libya [Africa] is surrounded by water except for where it borders Asia. The first one we know of to have discovered this fact was Nechos king of Egypt. After he had stopped excavation work on the canal, which extended from the Nile to the Arabian Gulf, he sent some Phoenicians off on boats with orders to sail around Libya and back through the Pillars of Herakles [Straits of Gibraltar] into the Mediterranean Sea and to return by that route to Egypt. And so the Phoenicians set out from the Erythraean Sea [Red Sea] and sailed the Southern Sea. Whenever autumn came, they would put in to shore at whatever region of Libya they happened to have reached in order to sow seeds. There they would wait for the harvest, and after reaping their crops, they would sail on again. This they did for two years, and in the third, they came around through the Pillars of Herakles and returned to Egypt. They mention something else which I do not find credible, though someone else may: that when they were sailing around Libya, the sun was on their right side as they went.2

Phoenician Merchant Ship

Not surprisingly the above account has given rise to much discussion about whether or not it describes a real event. The consensus seems to be that it does for two main reasons.

First the amount of time given for the voyage, more than two years is realistic given the types of ships available and their limitations. Certainly the added detail of the crews stopping twice to sow crops also rings true. Secondly the detail that Herodotus records only to dismiss it as unbelievable, i.e., the sun being on their right is in fact true. This is true because in the Northern Hemisphere the sun if one is sailing westward the sun would always be on the left in the south. When one crosses the equator, the sun would appear overhead and then south of the equator the sun in the Southern Hemisphere would appear to the right in the north.3

It is in fact the second detail that is most convincing and it is rendered even more convincing in that Herodotus dismisses this as untrue. Apparently because he was unaware of the idea of the Earth having a spherical shape.4

Even in antiquity the above story was doubted by many. For example:

In giving the names of those who are said to have circumnavigated Libya Poseidonius says that Herodotus believes that certain men commissioned by Neco accomplished the circumnavigation of Libya; and adds that Heracleides of Pontus in one of his Dialogues makes a certain Magus who had come to the court of Gelo assert that he had circumnavigated Libya. And, after stating that these reports are unsupported by testimony,…5

The Historian Polybius also expressed doubts:

Just as with regard to Asia and Africa where they meet in Aethiopia no one up to the present has been able to say with certainty whether the southern extension of them is continuous land or is bounded by a sea,…6

Finally the great polymath Ptolemy had Africa joined to Asia! For example see this map made from the coordinates given in Ptolemy’s book.7

Ptolemy’s World Map

Also the whether or not the voyage actually happened has been doubted up to today, for various reasons.

The lack of detail for example, even the name of the Commander is not given. The lack of detail is hardly surprising however given that at the time it is unlikely that much more than a summary report would have been deposited in any archive or that after c. 100 years there would be much recorded except a brief summary and oral reports.

Further in regards to Herodotus; he may have heard details and simply recorded a bare summary of what he heard. We do know that Herodotus did not record everything he heard.8

So it appears that the lack of detail such as a notification of the disappearance of the Great Bear constellation, etc., is not much of a problem, further why then not ignore the telling detail of the position of the sun?

In fact the lack of elaborate detail, and fanciful stories are powerful indicators that the story is likely true. It sounds relatively prosaic and the only detail that Herodotus gives that he considers fanciful is absolutely true! Further the argument that the Pharaoh Necho would never approve of such a speculative venture is completely speculative. The fact is we do not know enough about him to judge what was or was not within his character.9

As for problems such as if they could make the voyage if they lacked a compass? It should remembered that they were following a coast line. On the way south on their west side and on the way north on their east side. This is not all that difficult. Given that sea travel in those days tended to be coast hugging and not a huge amount of cross oceanic travel, and considering that this particular voyage being into the unknown would if anything tend to be even more coast hugging it is not likely that a compass would be necessary to do it at all.10

Some have alleged the voyage is to short. This can be dismissed without further ado. The voyage took over two years, plenty of time even with two stops to grow crops. The idea that the sailors from the Northern latitudes would not have been able to judge when to plant makes them singularly unobservant and they could also ask the locals.11

As for why such a voyage was not repeated at a later date if it was in fact done. It should be remembered that the evidence we have indicates that later attempts to circumnavigate Africa were through the Mediterranean and down the west coast of Africa. There the currents and winds, especially for the vessels used in antiquity made such an attempt very difficult. In fact the Portuguese when they attempted it had great difficulty, because of winds and currents near the African coast. In the end they found that sailing far out into the Atlantic and then at the latitude of the Cape of Good Hope sailing East was the best way to do it. For the ships of antiquity such a voyage was frankly suicidal!12

Africa

The following is a possible reconstruction of the voyage. They probably left in November from a Red Sea port, they would have sailed out of the Red sea and into the Indian Ocean. There the wind and current would sweep them south. Until the Mozambique current caught them and moved them even further south past the Cape of Good Hope. Near by they may have stopped and sowed and harvested some crops, perhaps in May. Circumstances along with their orders would have urged them north, since the currents and winds that eased their journey south would have made any return voyage back up the east coast of Africa in the ships they had extremely difficult.

After the harvest the winds and currents would have helped them north up to the great bend of Africa. Along the Guinea coast they would have encountered winds and currents that were hostile but they could get past those obstacles because they could use oars. Some time in November December they would have stopped in Morocco and sown more crops and after harvesting them returned through the Mediterranean to Egypt after a voyage of c. 2 ½ years!13 They must have been glad to get home.

Of course for both the Phoenicians and Nechos this trip served to tell them that going around Africa for trade or shifting ships was not practical at the time. It also was a feat of sailing that was not duplicated, that we know of, for c. 2000 years. It was simply not practical until the late 15th century.

It is however of interest that even that long ago men were trying out daring feats of exploration and discovery and that man thirst for knowledge is not a modern invention.

1. Herodotus, The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, Random House Inc., New York, 2007, p. 297-298, Cary, M. & Warmington, E. H., The Ancient Explorers, Second Edition, Penguin Books, London, 1963, pp. 110-119, James, Peter, & Thorpe, Nick, Ancient Mysteries, Ballantine books, New York, 1999, pp. 368-369, Casson, Lionel, The Ancient Mariners, Minerva Press, New York, 1959, pp. 129-132, Morison, Samuel Eliot, The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, Oxford University Press, 1971, p. 5, Rennell, James, The Geographical System of Herodotus, V. 2, Second Edition, C. J. G. & F. Rivington, London, 1830, pp. 348-408, at Internet Archive Here.

2. Herodotus, 2007, Book 4, s. 42. Some translations add “-to northward of them.” See Herodotus, The Histories, 2nd Revised Edition, Penguin Books, London, 2003, Book 4. s. 42.

3. Herodotus, 2007, p. 299, Footnote 4.42.4a, James, pp. 370-371, Cary, p. 115, Casson, pp. 131-132.

4. James, p. 370.

5. Strabo, Geography, Book 2, s. 4, at LacusCurtius, Here.

6. Polybius, The Histories, Book 3, s. 38, at Lacus Curtius, Here.

7. See also Ptolemy, The Geography, Book 4, at Internet Archive, Here.

8. Lateiner, Donald, The Historical Method of Herodotus, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1989, pp. 59-75, Cary, pp. 114-115.

9. Cary, p. 115, Casson, pp. 131-132, James, pp. 369-373.

10. Cary, 115-116. James, IBID.

11. Cary, pp. 116-117, Casson, pp. 131-132.

12. Cary, pp. 117-118, Morison, Samuel Eliot, The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages, Oxford University Press, 1974, pp. 220-223, James, p. 374, Rennell, pp. 348-408.

13. Cary, pp. 117-119, James, p. 374, Casson, 131-132, Rennell, pp. 348-408.

Pierre Cloutier