Popular Biography

Ancient popular biographies are distinguished by a set of common characteristics: primacy of content over form, simple one-dimensional characterization, a non-organic accumulative structure, circulation in variant versions, wide appeal across space and time, and heavy dependence on oral storytelling materials. The various traditions regarding the Seven Sages current in classical Greece were a form of collective popular oral biography of this group and influenced later biographical compositions significantly. The protagonists of these stories are often shown in roles typically found in the folktale repertoire. The Life of Aesop is an exemplary representative of popular biography. It combines old legends about Aesop, anecdotes borrowed from other cultural traditions, pieces of wisdom literature, and widespread folktales. It incorporates many specimens of folk genres (fables, scabrous novellas, proverbs, riddles) and reproduces the structure of Aesopic fables on a magnified scale. Other biographical compositions containing such popular elements (Life of Secundus, Alexander Romance, Lives of Homer) are also briefly discussed.

A Dung Beetle's Victory: The Moral of the Life of Aesop (Vita G)

The Life of Aesop is an entertaining yet profound account of Aesop's life dating from the first to second centuries ad. Although it is widely agreed that the Life of Aesop may be read as a ‘metafable’, there has been, in my view, a widespread and perversely negative interpretation of the supposed moral of this life story: that ‘pride comes before a fall’. This supposed moral is not borne out by the ending, in which Aesop's prophecies of doom prove to be correct, the Delphians are thrice punished for executing Aesop, and Aesop himself achieves everlasting fame as a storyteller. In this paper, I will argue that a more fitting moral for the Life of Aesop is that ‘even the weakest may find a means to avenge a wrong’. This is the moral that accompanies the quintessentially Aesopic fable of the dung beetle, the hare, and the eagle in which a tiny dung beetle triumphs over a powerful adversary. This fable is pointedly narrated by Aesop to the Delphians just before he is put to death. By reading the Life of Aesop as an exposition of this fable, I will demonstrate that Aesop, just like the dung beetle, is not the loser but the ultimate victor.

The Pharmakos

A pharmakos is a person expelled and/or killed in order to heal a community. This chapter demonstrates substantial conceptual and cultural overlaps between the gospel Passion narratives and the closing scenes of the Life of Aesop. Both Jesus and Aesop tell inflammatory parables, are unjustly arrested, tried, killed, resurrected, and honored after their deaths.

Äsopische geschichten in Meisterlied, Spruchgedicht und comedi

Hans Sachs, who, in upwards of 6000 poetic works, brought literature to the German-speaking urban middle and lower classes, adapted for his largely illiterate audience lengthy portions of Steinhöwel’s ›Esopus‹, including the ›Life of Aesop‹, turning them into Meisterlieder, Spruchgedichte, and a comedi. The ›Life‹ was the source, for one, of selected episodes which he could each rework adeptly for easy listening as individual shorter texts. In the work he wrote for the stage, ›Esopus der fabeldichter‹, moreover, he used his skill as dramatist to link a few episodes from the ›Life‹ and make of them a coherent plot with scenes not just strung loosely together, but united by an overarching theme.

Throw the Blasphemer off a Cliff: Luke 4.16–30 in Light of theLife of Aesop

In Jesus’ sermon at Nazareth in Luke (4.16–30), his reminder that Elijah had aided non-Jews (vv. 26–7) is met with an unusual death sentence – to throw Jesus from a cliff. This has been conceptually and geographically vexing for scholars. This paper reads the passage beside theLife of Aesop, in which the Delphians condemn the fabulist to the same fate for blasphemy (130–42). Aesop's offence, like Jesus’, is to malign the special status of the Delphians before their god. The Lukan Evangelist's use of the same manner of death for the same type of speech act indicates that the crowd at Nazareth has condemned Jesus for blasphemy.

Reflection

The legendary Aesop, whom Herodotus (Histories, 2.134) places on Samos in the sixth century BCE, did not write a single fable with his own hand. The fables that have survived under his name were written in the centuries after his death, composed by a diverse set of writers who labeled their stories “Aesop’s” with little concern for historical accuracy. We are left with hundreds of tales and anecdotes scattered across the remains of classical literature, in both Greek and Latin, in prose and in verse, each one with murky origins and dubious links to the life of Aesop....

Aesop Victimized

A passage from theLife of Aesophas been used by several scholars to answer some important questions regarding the Greek ritual of sacrifice. Although the interpretation of ancient religious behaviours as reconstructed by these scholars is to some degree confirmed by external data, I argue that the aforementioned text contains little or no information relevant to the study of the subject matter. What is more, the manner in which its anonymous author mentions the ritual’s particulars in passing indicates that he did not intend to dwell upon any theological issues.