Aesop and His Fabulous
Fables
Ashim Kumar Paul
In the childhood
when our ‘golden’ days were replete with numerous kinds of puerile activities, we
were taught by our mentors, no matter, from our own house or school, the very
axiom: “slow and steady wins the race”
that consistency, although
progress may be slow, will eventually be more beneficial than being hasty or
careless just to get something done. It does not really matter whether most of
us paid heed to the axiom or the lesson of the axiom went unheard but we were taught
to memorise the very sentence.
However, it always remained unknown to most of us about the man who generated the great lessons through the simple tale “The Tortoise and The Hare” or “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”. We just savour the tales printed on our books or told by our mentors. In fact, very few of us know the man, namely, Aesop.
Aesop is ever-remembered
all over the world for his illustrious fables which convey moral lessons by
means of weaving stories involving animals. He
was a historical figure and many
stories are told about him in ancient manuscripts. Most of his fables can be
traced to 6th BC. Countless generations have been enthralled with his amusing
and thought provoking tales always marked by a moral and ethical undertone.
Aesop, the most
famous fabulist of all time, is a legendary figure shrouded in mystery. The
history of Aesop is buried in antiquity and, like that of Homer, is cloaked in
myth and legend. The place of his birth is uncertain -- Thrace, Phrygia,
Aethiopia, Samos, Athens and Sardis--- all claiming the honour. It is argued by
many that he was born a slave, and during his lifetime, two different masters
owned him before being granted his freedom. The slave masters were named,
Xanthus and Iadmon while the latter gave him his freedom as a reward for his
opulent wit and intelligence.
However, the legend
behind his freedom can be added to illustrate his stockpile of intelligence. The
lord of Aesop, during a feast, too boldly stated that he would drink the sea.
If he couldn't he would lose all his wealth. The next morning, realizing his
claim was impossible to complete, he called Aesop. Aesop quickly comprehended the
trouble his master was in and promised that he would help save his master’s dignity
and honour. At that, both men went to the seashore to face a noisy crowd,
gathered to see how the stupid man would make possible to "drink the
sea". Aesop explained to the people that his master could
"drink" the sea, but for the rules to be met all the water from the
rivers and lakes, flowing into the sea, should be removed. Needless to say,
nobody was able to separate the sea, and the master saved his wealth and honour.
As a reward, Aesop received his freedom.
Although all of the fables by Aesop are relatively short and many of
them are designed as cautionary tales, it is up to us to discover ourselves what is hidden
behind the images presented by the author. Many
of them feature anthropomorphised animals. Each fable features a situation and
a set of actions, and finishes with a brief moral. As a genre of fables, they are close to the artistic
atmosphere of fairy tales about animals. They are not the typical Greek myths
that we know from the Greek mythology about Gods and Heroes. Observing the life
and characteristics of animals, the fabulist makes a comparison between them
and the moral characteristics of men. Trickery is not only exclusive to the
fox, calmness - not only for pigeons, deceit - not only for the snake,
cowardice - not just for rabbits.
All
these properties can be encountered in the conduct of people. Seeing these
similarities, people began to call one another fox, snake, and rabbit in their
domestic relations. But the images of animals and plants also have a parabolic
meaning: the donkey began to express the characteristics of a hard and stupid
man, the sheep - of the gentle and harmless, the snake - of the evil and
vindictive, and the wolf reveals the nature of an evil and cruel man.
In
that sense, Aesop summarises the essential morals of his time, giving them a
satirical evaluation. Not only to hide the sharpness of his critics, but also
to provoke the resourcefulness of people, Aesop often likens people with
animals and plants.
This
particular sense of expression has been associated with Aesop throughout the
centuries, starting from ancient Greece, going into Rome and Byzantium,
reaching the Renaissance and surviving until today. Since the time of Aesop the
fable was a powerful tool to expose and ridicule our ills and vices as people
and as a society.
Known history shows
that Aesop never wrote down any of his fables (there’s actually no
evidence that he could write at all), and that the first-known collection of
fables bearing his name was collected by Demetrius Phalareus (founder of the
Alexandria Library) in the 4th century BCE, but did not survive beyond the 9th
century CE. Later, a Greek freedman of Augustus Caesar named Phaedrus turned
Aesop’s fables into Latin iambics (verse poems). Finally in the 1300s, a monk
named Maximus Planudes of Constantinople compiled the definitive book of
Aesop’s fable. Two hundred years after his death, the famous statue of Aesop,
carved by master craftsman Lysippus, was erected at Athens, set in place in
front of the statues of the Seven Sages.
Among the Aesop’s tales packed up with amusing
as well as thought-provoking contents, the tales like “The Town Mouse and the
Country Mouse”, “The Hare and the Tortoise”, “The Lioness and Small Respect”,
“The Boy Who Cried Wolf”, “The Dog and His Reflection” are well-read in our
school days. The tale, “The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse” shows that
although it’s tempting to envy another person’s life, their life is rarely as
great as it seems from a distance while “The Hare and the Tortoise” is one of
the famous tales by Aesop that concerns a hare who ridicules a slow-moving
tortoise who challenges him to a race. The hare soon leaves the tortoise behind
and, confident of winning, takes a nap midway through the course. The tortoise
gets tired but he keeps going. When the hare awakes, however, he finds that his
competitor, crawling slowly but steadily, has arrived before him. As in several
other fables by Aesop, there is a moral ambiguity about the lesson it is
teaching. Later interpreters have asserted that it is the proverbial 'the more
haste, the worse speed'. We may also be familiar with the tale “The Boy Who
Cried Wolf” involving a shepherd boy who repeatedly tricks
nearby villagers into thinking a wolf is attacking his flock. When a wolf
actually does appear, the villagers do not believe the boy's cries for help,
and the flock is destroyed. Or think of the tale “The Dog and His Reflection”
that reflects the moral it is better to be satisfied with what you have because
if you go running greedily after what somebody else has, you'll lose what
you've got.
It is of note that many popular
fables throughout history have been attributed to Aesop, the imprecision
surrounding the writings and the accounts of his life has been yet to be
culminated in. According to some legends, his death was unnatural. He was said
to have been killed in Delphi by some people following a misunderstanding.
There is no general consensus as to what constitutes the original fables of
Aesop and how many were later added on ascribed to him owing to his popularity.
There is also a theory that Aesop probably got some of his stories from the
sailing Indian merchants or the traveling Buddhist monks and added them to his
own. The similarity between some stories of the Panchatantra and those of Aesop
do suggest that both these works had drawn probably from some common folklore
of their times. It is possible that some of the fables might have traveled
either ways along the trade routes and the wandering tribes and were
incorporated in course of time into respective lists. However, notwithstanding
the controversial stories surrounding the myths of the stories and life-span of
Aesop, the fables still read by millions of readers in this busy, hectic and information
technology-wrapped world have even now shield their ascendancy.
