MODERN versions of Æsop go back no further than 480 A.D. In their
earliest use they are related to the folklore current among all
primitive peoples. This folklore had risen in Greece to the rank of
literary form a thousand years before the above-mentioned revival
in Germany, France, and England. As the creation of Æsop it was the
answer to a need for trenchant, but veiled, characterization of men
and measures in the dangerous times of the Tyrants. In mirth-provoking
utterances, quite apart from personal criticism, things could be
intimated with all the force of specific judgments, yet in such veiled
form that to resent them was tacit confession that they applied. Later
on, when free speech became safer, the grammarians and rhetoricians
raised these clever, pithy stories to the literary form they have since
maintained.
There is for Æsop’s Fables no authorized original version. Always, it
appears, they were subject to interpolations and special versions.
They took on metrical forms in Latin, and in later times in French.
It is the particular distinction of a real fable that it bears this
amplification, yet can at any time and from any true version shake
off the accessories of particular phrasing and in its bare facts meet
all the requirements of a literary and artistic whole. It is this
static character which has made the fable of such value to language
students. Even little children, comparing different versions, learn
to distinguish the raw material of a real story from its varying
renderings. Subjoined is an account of Æsop, called the Inventor and
Father of Fable in its present form.