Aesop's Fables
This exclusive Signet Classic edition contains 203 of Aesop’s most enduring and popular fables, translated into readable, modern American English and beautifully illustrated with classic woodcuts by the great French artist J. J. Grandville.
It is both amazing and wonderful that so much of the richness of our language and our moral education still owes a huge debt to a Greek slave who was executed more than two thousand years ago. Yet “sour grapes,” “crying ‘wolf,’” “actions speak louder than words,” “honesty is the best policy,” and literally hundreds of other metaphors, axioms, and ideas that are now woven into the very fabric of Western culture all came from Aesop’s Fables. An extraordinary storyteller who used cunning foxes, surly dogs, clever…
$8.99
October 5, 2004Aesop (6th century BC), is believed to have been a Greek slave on the island of Samos and, according to Herodotus and other classical writers, he was killed by the people of Delphi, who threw him off a rock after he had committed some grave offence against them. Legend has it that he was misshapen, ugly and spoke with a stammer, but his storytelling was famed for its wit, and his ability to teach lessons in morality through story has made his name synonymous with the genre of 'fable'. None of the stories attributed to him existed in written versions until about 300 BC, and the fables have been added through the centuries to the collections appearing under his name,…