Aesop

We all know the story

about how the cheeky hare

was beaten by the slow

and steady tortoise… 

but who was Aesop?

Time to find out:

A Greek man… 

 A slave!

A deformed, dwarf slave…

sounds almost too creative

 to be true. 

Must be true, though… 

Apparently, his first owner

 was Xanthus…

and eventually Aesop became free.

It seems that Aesop lived

from about 650BC to 520BC.

  BC!

And we still know his fables…

 impressive!

The first English translations

 (From a French version)

of Aesop’s fables

were shared in 1484.

Now for some scandal…

about 1000 years

before Aesop

was supposedly alive,

someone wrote

on Egyptian papyri…

 the writings on the papyri

are very, very close

to Aesop’s fables…

so, did he actually write

the fables himself??

I suppose I would be

happy enough to agree

that he was the first man

 to write the old,

traditional stories down.

Each of the Aesop fables

ends with a moral

and there are suggestions

that his fables were not written

 as children’s stories,

but as guidelines and suggestions

about how people should act.

 There are so many fables

to read…

If you feel your behaviour

 needs improving,

check out a few

of the fables here.

Today would have been

Aesop’s birthday.

Photos from here,

here and here.