A translation of the complete Aesopian corpus of fables. The introduction pays particular attention to the transmission of fable "stock" from sanscrit to Aesop. It also attends to the precise nature of the animals themselves who appear in these fables, and tries to rescue the fables both from a tradition of moralistic interpretation and from the academic perception of the genre as an exclusively populist one.
Author Biography
AESOP probably lived in the middle part of the sixth century BC. A statement in Herodotus gives grounds for thinking that he was a slave. OLIVIA TEMPLE is a figurative painter, a director of several private companies, and has also written articles and reviews for a variety of magazines. ROBERT TEMPLE is the author of eight books, and has published several articles about the scientific works of Aristotle. He is also a television drama producer.
