Aesop: Biography of a Great Thinker

Fables are traditionally short stories with talking animals as the main characters. These animals have all the usual shortcomings of people, and get themselves in all kinds of trouble. Fables typically carry a cautionary tone, or convey a moral lesson. But the very nature of these stories, with amusing animals instead of people, makes them more palatable. They don't come across as scolding. People have been telling these kinds of stories forever. It's part of what we call the oral tradition of storytelling. Eventually, someone started writing fables down. We've been reading them ever since. The most famous of these stories are Aesop's fables. These include the tortoise and the hare, a story with the moral, slow and steady wins the race. There's also the boy who cried wolf, which teaches the importance of telling the truth, so your word may be trusted. Many of our oldest truisms, like don't count your chickens before they're hatched, or look before you leap, come from Aesop's fables. There are hundreds of these tales attributed to Aesop, each serving as a gentle guide. Aesop, legend has it, was born around 620 BC in Greece. Some say he was a slave who told such clever stories, he eventually rose to a position of great influence. Some say he was an odd-looking fellow, short, pot-bellied, with squinty eyes who people made fun of, until he started telling his ingenious tales. Other people say he never existed at all. Aesop was just a name someone made up. We don't know for certain, since there is no direct evidence proving Aesop's existence. He was mentioned in the writings of Aristotle, Herodotus and Plutarch, but of course, they lived hundreds of years after Aesop's time. Even if Aesop's fables were not written by one man named Aesop, they represent wit and wisdom passed down from the ancient Greeks. Nowadays, Aesop's fables are often considered kid stuff, but they are much more than that. They have endured as one of the earliest forms of Western literature, and can serve as a moral compass. Everyone needs to learn right from wrong.