Aesop's Fables (5 page)

The traditional virtue of loyalty presents another pair of examples. In “The Birds, the Beasts, and the Bat” (no. 168) a bat sides first with the birds, then with the beasts, and in the end is rejected by both groups as a double-faced traitor. On the other hand, in the fable “The Bat and the Weasels” (no. 7) a bat escapes from a weasel two times, first by claiming to be a mouse and later by claiming to be a bird.

The time-honored virtue of honesty provides yet another pair of contradictory fables. In “The Wolf and the Boy” (no. 171) a wolf captures a boy, but then spares his life as a reward for the boy having told the truth. “The Apes and the Two Travelers” (no. 44) reflects the opposite view. Here two strangers in the land of the apes are asked what they think of the king and his subjects. One of them lies, and is given a handsome reward; the other tells the truth (they are “fine apes”), and he is clawed to death for his honesty.

The view that “might makes right” is reflected in many animal fables, arguably offering license to the powerful to follow their own self-interests and urging the weak to remain submissive. Examples include “The Lion and the Wild Ass” (no. 107), “The Lion, the Fox, and the Ass” (no. 246), “The Wolf and the Lamb” (no. 11), and “The Cat and the Cock” (no. 116). But the opposite view is also represented. In one of the best-known of all Aesopic fables, “The Hare and the Tortoise” (no. 117), it is not the speedy hare who wins the race, but instead the contestant who, by racing standards, is seriously handicapped. Likewise, in the lesser-known fable “The Mouse and the Bull” (no. 139) a battle between very unevenly matched opponents does not go to the stronger of the two.

The previous section emphasizes fables, taken in pairs or small groups, that illustrate the unreliability, or at best the relativity of traditional moral rules. However, there are few, if any contradictions within the Aesopic collection to the Socratic admonition to know oneself and to be true to oneself. And in the Aesopic tradition knowing oneself also implies a resigned acceptance of that which cannot be changed about one’s being and one’s fate. Dozens of fables preach these views.

My first examples describe individuals who vainly try to assume the attributes of another (and presumably superior) group, only to be exposed, subjected to ridicule, or even put to death. In “The Ass and the Lapdog” (no. 32) an ass is severely beaten when he tries to imitate a pet dog by jumping into his master’s lap. The fable ends with the ass’s recognition of his own foolish behavior. In his own words, “Why could I not be satisfied with my natural and honorable position, without wishing to imitate the ridiculous antics of that useless little lapdog?” Similarly, in “The Monkey and the Camel” (no. 164) a camel tried to dance like a monkey, “but he cut such a ridiculous figure as he plunged about, and made such a grotesque exhibition of his ungainly person, that the beasts all fell upon him with ridicule and drove him away.”

Numerous fables deride individuals who attempt to change their appearance by dressing in the clothes (or skin) of another. Such charades fail almost from the beginning. “The Ass in the Lion’s Skin” (no. 61), “The Jackdaw and the Pigeons” (no. 70), and “The Vain Jackdaw” (no. 84) all conclude with the disguised individuals quickly being exposed and ridiculed. A character’s altered appearance does not need to represent a desired change of identity. In “The Mice and the Weasels” (no. 96) the mice soldiers who before battle decorate themselves with large plumes are easily captured and killed by their opponents.

Fables about trying to change one’s appearance often have racial (even racist) overtones. In two stories, “The Crow and the Swan” (no. 148) and “The Blackamoor” (no. 105), attempts are made to wash black individuals white, with predictably unhappy results. These particular stories take on a special poignancy when one recalls that Aesop himself was said to have had very dark-colored skin.

Failure to know and to accept oneself as one is does not always manifest itself in altered appearance. Often it is vain, pretentious behavior alone that exposes the character to ridicule. In “The Eagle, the Jackdaw, and the Shepherd” (no. 170) a jackdaw tries to perform like an eagle. In “The Crow and the Raven” (no. 259) a crow imitates a raven. In “The Ox and the Frog” (no. 100) a mother frog tries to puff herself up to the size of an ox. In “The Wolf and His Shadow” (no. 238) a wolf sees his long shadow when the sun is low in the sky, perceives himself to be very large, then struts about in a manner befitting a giant. And in “The Tortoise and the Eagle” (no. 81) a tortoise tries to learn to fly. All these attempts end with ridicule or death for the pretenders.

Aesopic fables reflect a society structured by class and privilege, and although the stories seem to have come from the lower classes (remember that both Aesop and Phaedrus were reputed to have been born as slaves), they do little to encourage an individual to rise above his or her original station in life. To the contrary, a number of fables illustrate the moral “Better servitude with safety than freedom with danger”—for example, “The Fox Who Served a Lion” (no. 253) and “The Pack Ass, the Wild Ass, and the Lion” (no. 201). Similarly, in “The Ass and His Masters” (no. 200) a beast of burden, overworked and abused by his owner, prays for a new master, only to find himself in a worse situation, then prays again for another new master, and his situation worsens again. Finally, in “The Runaway Slave” (no. 270) the fugitive is soon recaptured, and we are given to believe that he too will henceforth be much worse off than before his attempted escape.

In keeping with their folklore heritage, Aesopic fables reflect the lifestyle, the values, and the frustrations of ordinary people in classical antiquity: slaves, peasants, workers, and tradespeople. These stories are not liberal treatises about self-determination and upward mobility. To the contrary, they more often preach a philosophy of acceptance and resignation. However, they do offer consoling, pragmatic advice that can make life easier even for the disenfranchised and the poor.

“Do not grieve too long at the death of a loved one” is the message of “Grief and His Due” (no. 276). “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” is the proverbial sentiment embodied in a number of fables, including “The Dog and His Reflection” (no. 94) and “The Lion and the Hare” (no. 183). “Do not trust the words of your enemies” is the lesson that emerges from “The Wolf, the Mother, and Her Child” (no. 112). “Father and Sons” (no. 58) and “The Lion and the Three Bulls” (no. 122) emphasize the value of unity. “The Grasshopper and the Ants” (no. 156) shows the utility of thrift and industry. “The Shepherd’s Boy and the Wolf (no. 46) admonishes honesty, not so much as an absolute ethical standard, but more as a pragmatic practice, because, as the moral of the story states, “You cannot believe a liar even when he tells the truth.” “The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs” (no. 2) preaches against greed, but again, not as an abstract principle, but rather as a practical way to avoid catastrophic loss.

“The Oak and the Reeds” (no. 41) perhaps provides the capstone to the pragmatic moral philosophy of Aesop. An oak tree, sturdy and unwavering, is uprooted by a severe storm, whereas some reeds, bowing and yielding to every breeze, survive without injury. The moral of this story is too obvious to require restatement.

Many of the best-known Aesopic fables refrain from overt preaching, depicting instead selected episodes of human behavior, without comment. Aesop thus holds a mirror up to humanity, and he does not always like the reflection that he sees. However, he does not need to burden his depictions with explicit value judgments. The perceptive reader will understand.

“The Sick Stag” (no. 177) is the timeless tale of a sick animal surrounded by well-wishers who thoughtlessly eat all the nearby grass, thus inadvertently causing their friend to perish from hunger. The central character in “The Miser” (no. 262) gloats over his treasure but makes no practical use of it. The fox without a tail, in the fable bearing that title (no. 83), having lost his own tail in a trap, tries to talk all his fellow foxes into cutting off their tails to divert attention from his own loss. Another fox, in “The Foxes and the River” (no. 263), recklessly steps into a river and is swept away, but he refuses to admit that he has made a mistake and pretends to be going for a leisurely swim. Open a collection of Aesop’s fables at random, and you will almost certainly find a tale reflecting an unpleasant aspect of human behavior and psychology.

An important function of folklore and mythology in all cultures is to offer explanations as to why things are as they are. Specialists refer to such explanatory tales as etiological tales, stories about causes. They are also called
pourquoi
tales from the French word for “why.” These accounts can be religiously serious or playfully fictitious. There are many etiological tales among the fables of Aesop, and they belong almost exclusively to the playful category. The previously quoted admonition of Phaedrus, the compiler of the oldest Aesop collection still extant, is of special significance with reference to etiological tales: “Remember that I speak in jest of things that never happened.”

Etiological tales by a different author and in another context can take on the gravity of a creation myth, but it is unlikely that the ancient Greeks took very seriously the humorous Aesopic account as to why the tortoise carries his house on his back as recorded in “Jupiter and the Tortoise” (no. 71). Similarly, “Mercury and the Tradesmen” (no. 95), an explanation as to why all tradesmen lie, but especially the horse dealers, is much more of a “used-car salesman joke” than it is a theological treatise, in spite of its reference to one of the classical deities. Yet another lighthearted Aesopic etiological fable invoking a deity is “The Bee and Jupiter” (no. 40), which explains why bees have barbed stingers that cost them their lives when they use them.

Even those etiological fables that comment on grave philosophical issues do so in a playful manner. I let three examples suffice: “The Man, the Horse, the Ox, and the Dog” (no. 234) justifies the increasingly difficult stages of human life as one ages. “The Goods and the Ills” (no. 24) shows why there appears to be more evil than good on earth. And “Prometheus and the Making of Man” (no. 279) explains why some people have the bodies of men but the souls of beasts. These are weighty topics, and the brief fables that address them do not claim to solve the problems that they embody, but then neither do they simply brush such problems aside, pretending that they do not exist.

Moral involvement is a quintessential function of the fable, which will often translate into discussions of religion, given the close association in most, if not all cultures between morality and religion. It should thus come as no surprise that religion plays a central role in many of the Aesopic fables.

The religion in question is, of course, that of the ancient Greeks, as interpreted by the Romans, through whose intermediacy the fables have come to us. Thus most of the deities mentioned are identified by their Roman instead of their Greek names. (At the end of this book is a glossary describing the classical gods and heroes featured in the present collection of Aesopic fables.)

The Greeks and Romans did not worship a single, all-powerful, all-benevolent god, but instead recognized an assemblage of deities with varying degrees of power and sometimes bewildering and seemingly contradictory aims and expectations. The resulting ambivalence in the relationship between mortals and the deities surfaces repeatedly in Aesopic fables, some of which depict the great power of the gods, whereas others emphasize their apparent impotence.

Typical of fables reflecting the deities’ weakness is “The Man Who Lost His Spade” (no. 268), in which a farmer goes to a temple in the city, hoping there to gain information from the gods about a stolen spade. Upon his arrival he learns that a reward is being offered for the return of goods stolen from the temple. He concludes, “If these town gods can’t detect the thieves who steal from their own temples, it’s scarcely likely they can tell me who stole my spade.” Even more cynical is “The Man and the Image” (no. 101), in which a man destroys a sacred idol for its unwillingness or inability to grant him riches, and then is rewarded as a direct consequence of his sacrilegious act. Additional fables depicting the weakness of the gods and their prophets include “Mercury and the Sculptor” (no. 88), “The Image Seller” (no. 109), “The Prophet” (no. 130), and “The Eagle and the Beetle” (no. 223).

In other fables the opposite claim is made, namely that omniscient gods will indeed reward moral behavior and punish evil. For example, in “The Butcher and His Customers” (no. 251) a butcher, having lost a piece of meat to two lying thieves, concludes, “You may cheat me with your lying, but you can’t cheat the gods, and they won’t let you off so lightly.” Nor do the gods necessarily wait until the next life to reward virtue and punish vice, as evidenced in the fable “Mercury and the Woodman” (no. 17), in which a god rewards an honest woodcutter with a golden ax and a silver ax, in addition to the ordinary one that he had lost in a river, while a dishonest companion loses everything. Other examples of omniscient divine intervention are found in “The Rogue and the Oracle” (no. 273), where the Oracle at Delphi exposes a scoundrel who attempts to ridicule a venerable religious institution, and in “The Eagle and the Fox” (no. 250), with its conclusion that “False faith may escape human punishment, but cannot escape the divine.”

The examples from the previous paragraph notwithstanding, the moral view reflected in most of the Aesopic fables is human-centered and of this world. In “The Astronomer” (no. 187) the leading character is so absorbed by his vision of the sky that he falls into a dry well. Adding insult to injury, a cynical passerby chides him, “If you... were looking so hard at the sky that you didn’t even see where your feet were carrying you along the ground, it appears to me that you deserve all you’ve got.” Mortals themselves, not the gods, bear the primary responsibility for their own welfare. Only rarely do the deities of these fables intervene on man’s behalf. Even if they were able to, which is no sure thing, the gods could not possibly answer all of humankind’s prayers, for they often contradict one another, as stated explicitly in “The Father and His Daughters” (no. 197), when a father, desiring to pray for his two daughters’ happiness, learns that one of them, a gardener’s wife, wants rain, while the other one, a potter’s wife, wants dry weather. In the end, as we learn either implicitly or explicitly from “The Snake and Jupiter” (no. 237) and “Hercules and the Wagoner” (no. 102), the gods help those who help themselves.