قصة الكتاب :
Aesop’s Fables or the Aesopica are a collection of stories that are credited to Greek storyteller Aesop. Aesop was a slave who is believed to have lived in ancient Greece between the period 620 and 564 BC. The stories are of varied origins, have made it to modern times through different sources and continue to be told and interpreted in various popular and artistic media. The fables were originally popularized through the oral tradition but it wasn’t until three centuries after Aesop’s demise that they were all collected and published together in a single compilation.

\r\nThe fables remain one of the most widely known Greek works. Numbering 725 in total, they were primarily told from person to person for entertainment as well as with the intent of conveying a moral. All of the fables are allegorical myths based on animals or insects like foxes, cats, dogs, grasshoppers etc. representing humans in human-like situations. The fables themselves represent the oldest characteristic of human existence i.e. story-telling. From its inception, the fables have been teaching people, through their simplicity, about the consequences of making the wrong choices and how to make wise ones. However, the fables did not quite fit into the philosophical model that was later developed and popularized by famous thinkers like Aristotle and Plato and their successors. They have thus been disregarded by philosophers and were considered merely as moral stories for children and slaves. Their importance as a great source of practical ethics were never brought to the forefront in ancient Greece. Although Aesop is mentioned by a few Greek historians, many scholars even express doubts about his existence due to a lack of concrete supporting evidence.

\r\nThe fables that are now available to readers may not be recorded in the exact words in which they were once told. Over the years, due to the constant re-telling of the same stories, many of the words and phrases may have been changed to suit the storyteller’s convenience. Initially the fables catered to the adults as they conveyed religious, social and political themes. They were particularly used in the education of children post-Renaissance. The subversive nature of the stories themselves allowed the lower classes a means of creative escape from a world where the powerful prevailed. The fables also provided the readers with an opportunity for self-reflection albeit in a subtle, indirect manner. The ethical dimension of Aesop’s Fables has been reinforced through depiction in sculptures and paintings as well as through adaptations to drama and song. \r\n