FABLES OF /ESOP, the collection of old folklore or moralizing animal stories, attributed to the Greek fabulist JEsop (q.v.) who is said to have lived in the 5th and 6th centuries ac. His reputation is based on these amusingly satirical "beast stories" with an apposite moral, adapted to contemporary events and incidents, which he narrated at banquets and festival gatherings, for the entertainment of guests and visitors. Artless, simple and transparent in con struction, affecting no graces of style, the story is the main thing, the moral being always subordinate and never permitted to interfere with the principal theme. Insolent sarcasm, how ever, introduced into a fable, is said to have been the culminating incident which led to his assassination at Delphi. As oral productions, he did not commit his fables to writing but they were perpetuated by Xenophon, Aristotle, Plutarch, and other Greek writers. Aristo phanes alludes to them as "merry tales° and in the (Wasps) represents Philocleon as having learned lEsop's "absurdities° from conversa tions at banquets. Plato in (Phaedo) -repre sents Socrates as whiling away his last days in prison by versifying some of tEsop's fables "which he lcnew," and although he excludes poets, Plato introduces lEsop as a moral teacher in his model (Republic.) A collection of the 'Fables,' probably in prose, in 10 books, is recorded as made by Demetrius of Phalerium 345-283 B.c., for the use of orators; no copy of the collection, however, is known to exist. An edition in elegiac verse is also mentioned by. Suidas. The earliest known reliable version of the (Fables) is that of Babrius or Babrias, who, as related by Crusius, was a Roman and tutor to the son of Alexander Severus; he rendered the fables into Greek choliambic verse in the early part of the 3d century A.D. This
version was long laiown in fragments only, until in 1842 a complete manuscript, now in the British Museum, was discovered by Mr. Minas in a monastery on Mount Athos. Phaedrus, a Thracian freedman, who lived in Rome in the time of Augustus, produced a version of the fables in Latin iambics, malting, however, in ferior paraphrases and additions, which for a long time cast doubt on their authenticity, until dispelled by an epigraphical discovery. at Apulum in Dacia, and critical re-examination of the manuscript. In the 9th century Ignatius Dia conus made a version of 53 of the fables in choliambic tetrameters. Stories from Asiatic sources were added, notably from the Buddhist Jatalca folklore of India, and ()Esop's Fables) as known to-day are derived from the 14th cen tury edition compiled by Maximus Planudes, a monk of Constantinople. Through succeeding centuries, translations were made into almost every known language. Among the curiosities of literature, an early translation from the Babrian edition into Syriac by Syntipas 100 B.c. is mentioned, which Michael Andreopulos rendered back into Greek. One of the latest translations is that of Douglas (1901) into the Celtic Manx dialect. The fables have also been prolific sources of inspiration for artists which may he said to have culminated in Tenniel's illustrations with their combination of rare artistic power, humorous observation and knowledge of animal life. (See FABLES). Con sult Jacobs, J., 'The Fables of 2Esop; i. The history of the iFsopic fable; ii. The Fables of .7Esop, as first printed by William Caxton, 1484, from his French translation' (New York 1896).