Aesop : an inspired Master
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And they say that Apollonius began the discussion by asking his companions: "Is there such a thing as mythology?" "Yes, by Zeus," answered Menippus, "and I mean by it that which furnishes poets with their themes." "What then do you think of Aesop?" "He is a mythologist and writer of fables and no more." "And which set of myths show any wisdom?" "Those of the poets," he answered, "because they are represented in the poems as having taken place." "And what then do you think of the stories of Aesop?" "Frogs," he answered, "and donkeys and nonsense only fit to be swallowed by old women and children." "And yet for my own part," said Apollonius, "I find them more conducive to wisdom than the others. |
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For those others, of which all poetry is so fond, and which deal with heroes, positively destroy the souls of their hearers, because the poet relates stories of outlandish passion and of incestuous marriages, and repeats calumnies against the gods, of how they ate their own children, and committed crimes of meαnness, and quarreled with one another; and the affectation and pretense of reality leads passionate and jealous people and miserlike and ambitious persons to imitate the stories. Aesop on the other hand had in the first place the wisdom never to identify himself with those who put such stories into verse, but took a line of his own; and in the second, like those who dine well off the plainest dishes, he made use of humble incidents to teach great truths and after serving up a story he adds to it the advice to do a thing or not to do it. Then, too, he was really more attached to truth than the poets are; for the latter do violence to their own stories in order to make them probable; but he by announcing a story which everyone knows not to be true told the truth by the very fact that he did not claim to be relating real events. And the poet, after telling his story, leaves a healthy-minded reader cudgeling his brains to know whether it really happened; whereas one who, like Aesop, tells a story which is false and does not pretend to be anything else, merely investing it with a good moral, shows that he has made use of the falsehood merely for its utility to his audience. And there is another charm about him, namely, that he puts animals in a pleasing light and makes them interesting to mankind. For after being brought up from childhood with these stories, and after being as it were nursed by them from babyhood, we acquire certain opinions of the several animals and think of some of them as royal animals, of others as silly, of others as witty, and others as innocent. And whereas the poet, after telling us that there are
"many forms of heavenly visitation"* or something of the kind, dismisses his chorus and departs, Aesop adds an oracle to his story, and dismisses his hearers just as they reach the conclusion he wished to lead the up to. * Euripides, "Alcestis" |
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