Aesop's Fables

  First American edition published in 2020 by

  Interlink Books

  An imprint of Interlink Publishing Group, Inc.

  46 Crosby Street, Northampton, MA 01060

  www.interlinkbooks.com

  Text copyright © Carlo Gébler, 2019

  Illustrations © Gavin Weston, 2019

  Published in the UK by Head of Zeus and New Island Book

  All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

  a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,

  mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written

  permission of the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data available:

  ISBN-13: 978-1-62371-950-0

  Printed and bound in the United States of America

  Carlo Gébler:

  For Sam, Bill and Noah

  Gavin Weston:

  For Holly and Adam

  ‘A fable is a bridge that leads to truth.’

  Racial Proverbs, S.G. Champion, 1950

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

  Aesop is allegedly the author of a collection of Greek fables. Whether he existed or not is moot, though many attempts were made in ancient times to establish Aesop as a person. Herodotus said he lived in the sixth century BC and was a slave. Plutarch made him an adviser to Croesus, king of Lydia. A first-century Egyptian hagiography has him as a slave on the island of Samos who then went on to serve the King of Babylon, among others. In all probability Aesop was an invention created to dignify fabular materials with an author, and as a result the fable form and the name became synonymous. On the other hand, perhaps there really was an Aesop ...

  Carlo Gébler was born in Dublin in 1954 and lives outside Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. He is the author of novels including The Innocent of Falkland Road, short story collections including The Wing Orderly’s Tales, and the memoirs Father & I and The Projectionist: The Story of Ernest Gébler. He has also written novels for children and plays for radio and the stage, including 10 Rounds, which was shortlisted for the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize. From 1991 to 1997 he taught in HMP Maze, and from 1997 to 2015 he was writer-in-residence in HMP Maghaberry. He currently teaches at Trinity College Dublin, and the American College, as well as Hydebank Wood College where he works with young male and female prisoners. He is a member of Aosdána.

  Gavin Weston was born in Belfast in 1962. He lives on the Ards Peninsula with an ancient dog and a cantankerous parrot. He studied Fine Art at Central Saint Martins and Goldsmiths, London, before moving to Niger where he taught English and worked for the American NGO Africare. Returning to Ireland, he taught art (at Belfast Metropolitan College and Ulster University) while continuing to exhibit and create a number of prize-winning public artworks. He is the author of the novel Harmattan, set in West Africa, and was a columnist for The Sunday Times for many years. Working as writer-in-residence at HMP Magilligan, he met and became friends with Carlo Gebler and founded and edited the prison magazine TIME IN. Gavin is an ambassador and passionate advocate for the London-based NGO, FORWARD, which campaigns to end child marriage.

  INTRODUCTION

  I

  The Oxford English Dictionary describes a fable as a story not founded on fact. It doesn’t define an Aesop fable but perhaps a workable definition might be: a story not founded on fact that comes with a moral attached. This combination has always been a difficult proposition. When story and moral work in harmony, the reader experiences an ‘Oh yes ...’ moment and a rush of pleasure, but when story and moral are not in harmony, the reader experiences an ‘Oh no ...’ moment and a jolt of displeasure. We will always hate what ‘has a palpable design upon us’, said Keats, speaking of poetry though his argument applies to all literary forms, and certainly, as far as Aesop’s work is concerned, many readers, especially modern ones, have spurned it because of morals that are too obvious, too insistent or too bumptious.

  II

  Whether or not there was an actual Aesop, who wrote the fables that carry his name, is contested. Martin Luther, the theologian, believed Aesop was a fiction. However, should we prefer to believe there was such a figure, then we can turn to the Life of Aesop, an ancient Greek text of uncertain provenance. It was probably composed sometime during the first century A.D. and it almost certainly recycles material from earlier accounts of Aesop’s life.

  Aesop, according to the Life of Aesop, is born sometime in the fifth century B.C. (so about five or six hundred years before the composition of the Life). His place of birth is variously stated as Thrace, Phrygia, Ethiopia, Samos, Athens or Sardis. Physically he is dark-skinned (it is said his name derives from Aethiop, meaning Ethiopian) and he is hobbled by a long list of physical deformities: a swollen head, squint eyes, a fat lip, a snub nose, short arms, a pot belly, a hunched back, flat-feet, bandy legs and (in the language of the day) dwarfish stature. He also has a serious speech impediment or might even be mute.

  Aesop is born a slave or captured at an early age and made a slave. At some point (in adolescence or very early adulthood) he treats a priestess of the goddess Isis with such kindness that she gives him the gift of speech. He immediately uses his new talent to denounce his overseer to his master as a vicious, vindictive bully who makes the lives of the slaves in the household (himself included) utterly intolerable. It’s a first sign of an antagonism towards power that will later surface in his fables.

  Because he has spoken out, the master decides to be rid of Aesop in case he ferments rebelliousness among the other slaves. Aesop is transported to Ephesus (in modern Turkey) and put up for sale. However, because of his appearance and his impairments, no one will buy him. He is shipped on to the island of Samos where a second attempt is made to sell him. At the market, Xanthus, a potential buyer and an eminent philosopher (whose existence can’t be verified historically either), is visibly disgusted by Aesop’s defects. Aesop, however, has a brilliant response to Xanthus’s revulsion. A philosopher, Aesop says, should value a man for his mind rather than his body. Xanthus is impressed and perhaps chastened. He buys Aesop for his wife. He will be her manservant.

  Aesop moves into Xanthus’s home where he reveals himself to be a clever, shrewd, sarcastic, mercurial fellow: part trickster, part fool and a maverick who can untie seemingly intractable problems by the application of remorseless logic and reason. Here is a typical story from this period.

  Xanthus must leave home and go somewhere, but he’s anxious about what might happen on the journey. He sends Aesop outside to see if there are any crows around. According to popular belief, two crows are a portent of good fortune, while one crow is sign of bad luck. Aesop spots two crows outside and returns to Xanthus with the good news. The augury is good. He can make the journey.

  Xanthus, delighted, throws the door open, steps out and sees ... a single crow. One of the pair that Aesop spotted has just flown away.

  Xanthus aborts his expedition and rounds furiously on his slave. Aesop had reported two crows, says Xanthus, when in truth there was only one, and had he set off, as the omen foretold, he would doubtless have met disaster. To teach his slave to be more careful, Xanthus issues orders for Aesop to be whipped.

  As Aesop is waiting to receive his punishment a messenger comes to Xanthus’s house with a dinner invitation. Xanthus is delighted and accepts. When Aesop learns about this he realises that he can now stop his impending whipping because there is a glaring inconsistency in Xanthus’s thinking.

  Your omens, Aesop says to Xanthus, are the wrong way round. His good omen has ended in misfortune, while Xanthus’s bad omen has ended in good fortune. He, Aesop, who saw two crows, an auspicious omen, will shortly be flogged like
a dog, whereas Xanthus, who saw one crow, an inauspicious omen, will soon be making merry with his friends at supper. Clearly, the omens mean the reverse of what they’re supposed to mean, which makes them meaningless. Aesop’s argument persuades Xanthus. He scrubs Aesop’s beating. The demolition of certainties through the ruthless exposure of internal contradiction, as here, will be one of the hallmarks of Aesop’s fables.

  After Xanthus (and possibly this has something to do with Xanthus’s wife – perhaps she and Aesop are lovers), Aesop, still a slave, is passed on to Iadmon, a Samian. The latter, like Xanthus, is also impressed with Aesop. He grants Aesop his freedom. Aesop is now at liberty to forge an independent life. He becomes an adviser to the king of Babylon and he helps the king win a battle of wits with the king of Egypt. Aesop is rewarded handsomely for his expertise and thereafter he becomes a fixer, adviser and helper to orators, tyrants and politicians. His numerous employers value many things about him but what they value most of all is his narrative capacity. When he acts for you Aesop doesn’t simply make an argument or construct a case. He does something else. He tells stories – small, sharp fabular ones – and then, by the addition of a little addendum or moral (and the connections are ingenious), he interprets these stories in the interests of his clients. Typically, the morals have three parts experienced in the following order. The first is the italicised sentence before the fable, which announces what’s coming, known as the promythium (Greek pro-mythos, ‘before-story’). The second is the understanding expressed by the character inside the story, which shows what the character has grasped, known as the endomythium (Greek endo-mythos, ‘inside-story’). And the third is the italicised sentence after the fable, which summarises the message of the story that’s just been told, known as the epimythium (Greek epi-mythos, ‘after-story’). Not all fables come with all three but all come with one or two addenda that bridge the gap between the fiction and the present moment. These meanings (the morals wrung from the text), at least when Aesop is in charge, are surprisingly local and particular as well as wonderfully clever.

  For instance, acting on behalf of a demagogue on Samos who is on trial (if found guilty he will pay with his life), Aesop offers the following narrative in his defence to the court.

  A vixen is crossing a river. She is caught by the current and washes up in a gully. The gully is deep and she can’t get out. The sides are too steep. Besides being trapped, the vixen is also rotten with ticks. A hedgehog, who lives in the gully, offers to pick the ticks off her body. This won’t help her to get out of the gully but at least it will mean she won’t be tormented by tick bites any more. The vixen, however, declines the hedgehog’s offer. The hedgehog is puzzled. He asks her to explain. Her ticks, she says, have been sucking away at her for ages, albeit there’s almost nothing left for them to take at this point. However, if these ticks go, she says, they will be replaced by new ticks who will be hungry, aggressive and indefatigable. They will drink whatever blood is left in her body and she will die.

  Using his fable as a springboard, Aesop then makes the following argument on the defendant’s behalf. He likens the islanders to the old vixen and the demagogue on trial to one of the fat, engorged ticks stuck to her, adding that of course it’s wealth not blood he’s swollen with, the wealth of the people of Samos. The demagogue can be executed, Aesop concedes, but that will not be the end of the demagoguery. He will be replaced and the new demagogue will suck the people of Samos dry and then the people will find they are worse off than they would have been had they kept their old demagogue, which is exactly what the vixen understood. You’re better off with familiar than unfamiliar tormenters. The old won’t kill you, while the new will.

  Aesop’s technique (telling stories and then connecting them to the moment) is successful. He wins arguments for a lot of clients. His work also becomes ubiquitous. Listeners, having heard his fables, find they are compelled to retell them and as a result they spread. The effect of this combination of political success and literary reach is that Aesop becomes one of the best-known individuals in the world as it is in the fifth century B.C.

  And then, he falls. He visits Delphi, the city with the famous oracle. Here, he disrespects the local aristocracy and the city’s principal deity, Apollo. This isn’t surprising. He’s always been outspoken, pugilistic and ready to disparage vested interest and received opinion. The Delphians are outraged. They ‘plant’ a gold cup in his luggage. Then they ‘discover’ the cup. They accuse Aesop of stealing from the oracle’s temple, a sacrilegious crime and a capital offence. He is brought to trial. In his defence, Aesop deploys several of his own fables with moral addendums. One of these is ‘The Frog and the Mouse’ (number 33 in the present collection). In this tale a frog and a mouse, who are tied together by twine, swim together in a pool. Then the frog dives, dragging the mouse down into the depths. The mouse drowns. The bloated corpse of the mouse floats to the surface, with the frog still attached. The mouse is seized and carried away by a bird of prey, and the frog, who is still tied to the mouse, is taken too. Both are then eaten. Aesop connects the fable to the predicament in which he finds himself in the following way. He’s the mouse and the Delphians are the frog, he says, and he and the Delphians are tied like the mouse and the frog are. They can kill him but then they will die too because he and they are connected.

  The court are not persuaded by this conceit. Aesop is found guilty. He is taken to the cliff where prisoners are executed and he is hurled to his death. Shortly after this, famine, pestilence and war beset Delphi. The Delphians consult their Oracle of Apollo and learn that their woes are the direct result of their mistreatment of Aesop and his unjust death. It turns out they were tied after all, just like the mouse and the frog. The oracle instructs the Delphians to make amends for their offence and the city builds a pyramid in Aesop’s honour.

  III

  Aesop is first referenced by other writers in the fifth century B.C. In his history of the Greco-Persian wars, the Greek historian Herodotus describes Aesop as a historical figure from Thrace (the modern Balkans) who had lived on the island of Samos in the Aegean Sea, near the coast of modern Turkey.

  In The Birds, Herodotus’s near contemporary, Aristophanes, the comic playwright, has the character Pisthetaerus chide the Chorus Leader for his failure to go over his Aesop. Then he summarises the Aesop fable that the Chorus Leader would have known had he been across his Aesop. From the play text it’s clear that Aristophanes is sure that everyone in the audience will agree with Pisthetaerus. Everyone who’s anyone knows their Aesop.

  The earliest surviving written collection of Aesop’s fables is the work of Phaedrus: born a slave in Thrace in about 15 B.C., he moves to Italy, gains his freedom and produces his version (five books, ninety-four fables) in Rome. Phaedrus’s version is notable for two innovations. They’re written in verse and there’s no ‘inside-story’ moral. Instead, Phaedrus relies on the morals appended top and bottom.

  Many writers follow Phaedrus and produce their own version, often in verse. Aesop’s fables also attract the attention of pedagogues who see that they can use the fables to teach grammar, rhetoric and, most importantly, morality. This is a huge change. In the ancient world, Aesop’s fables are for adults and their morals aren’t closed. They are open and endlessly varied. Speakers are free to repurpose the fables as occasion demands. But once the pedagogues get hold of Aesop, work which was once playful and ambiguous is remade into a tool for the inculcating of approved norms. This begins to happen in English with Caxton, and by the time we come to Roger L’Estrange’s English translation, published 1692, with its foreword that states its explicit function is the initiation into children of ‘Sense’, the process is complete. Aesop, at least in English, is now the means by which moral absolutes are shoehorned into the heads of the impressionable young. And that idea that Aesop and moral instruction come as a package has been with us, more or less, ever since.

  IV

  Broadly speaking, Aesop has two subjects – t
he exercise of power and the experience of the powerless who endure life and all that it inflicts on them.

  In his fables, the gods and goddesses who exercise power tend to be capricious, wilful, thoughtless and unforgiving, while the powerless, the mortals (many of whom are animals) who endure life and all that it inflicts on them tend to be blind, deluded, foolish and careless. The discrepancy between the powerful and the powerless is a source of humour but it is also the basis of Aesop’s critique. The human world, as Aesop has it, is a place of rough justice, deep hurt, epic cruelty and unstinting monstrousness.

  When we are in trouble, as we are today, we revert to the literature of the ancients. We do this because this literature seems more relevant than modern literary art. This is certainly the reason why we, who both loved Aesop’s fables when we were children, have gone back to his work. His stories may be full of idiosyncrasies and impossibilities but the bitter truth lurking within the fables seems absolutely of the moment, of now – our rulers are detached and their subjects are suffering; life is unfair and justice is a fantasy. In the fables, as presented on the following pages with all their fabular integrity (speaking animals, thoughtful satyrs, capricious gods, et cetera) intact, we believe you will find the present. We hope this will be a salutary experience, and, who knows, perhaps it may even catalyse resistance or focus opposition to the present moment and to modern times.

  The source of the fables that follow is Émile Chambry’s Ésope Fables. Chambry has 358 fables in his collection. We have selected 190 of these: the ones that struck us as the ones that hurt the most. We have grouped these according to our own system and then rewritten them in new language. Our intention is they should be read by adults and not children. We understand and sympathise with the contempt bad morals have provoked, but we’ve opted to keep them in this version because not to keep them would violate the spirit of Aesop. It is our hope, however, that our morals, rather than trivialising, violating or undermining the fables, darken, extend and amplify them.