THE FABULIST AESOP, if there ever was such a person, was an ugly son of a bitch. Some compared him to a turnip, others to a pot or a jar for food or a goose egg. He was born with several physical deformities, one of which prevented speech. When we first meet him in world literature he is a slave; a very hard-working and pious slave; yet his cleverness, which was beyond compare, made him ill-suited to have as a servant.
One day his piousness compelled him to do a good turn for a priestess of Isis, who afterwards was so grateful that she prayed for speech to be granted poor Aesop. It was, and thenceforth there was no stopping him.
Although eventually he gained his freedom, he was for quite a long time the slave of a philosopher named Xanthus. Aesop outwitted this master at every turn (on one evening devising a way to expose the naked rear-end of the philosopher's wife to a gathering of guests) and in diverse situations, vexing him and winning the admiration of all the philosopher's students and ultimately of the philosopher himself.
A master of wit and comparative analysis, often Aesop made his clever points through the use of fables; he was always laying stories on people. However there were many fables in circulation amongst the Greeks of his time, and our man Aesop no doubt made free use of these allegorical stories in scoring his points. Cleverness may lie not in invention, but in exploitation.
By and by, the free man Aesop travelled about giving eloquent speeches and telling his stories and securing a name for himself. But he made one fatal error, offending a whole people — the Delphinians — and after being framed he was thrown from a cliff for it.
These are the kinds of facts one has to deal with, when one is dealing with Aesop. Just so, possibly all of Aesop's fables ought to be referred to as Aesopic — in the style or manner of Aesop — rather than being credited to the legendary figure himself. But it hardly seems to matter much nowadays.
