Aesop's Fables the fables arrived in and travelled from ancient Greece remains uncertain. Some cannot be dated any earlier than Babrius and Phaedrus, several centuries after Aesop, and yet others even later. The earliest mentioned collection was by Demetrius of Phalerum, an Athenian orator and statesman of the 4th century BCE, who compiled the fables into a set of ten books for the use of orators. A follower of Aristotle, he simply catalogued all the fables that earlier Greek writers had used in isolation as exempla, putting them into prose. At least it was evidence of what was attributed to Aesop by
The Sandman: Fables & Reflections is structured as a story within a story (this is a theme to which Gaiman will return in the "" arc). "Convergence" appeared between the "A Game of You" and "Brief Lives" story arcs. The collection also includes the "Sandman Special", retelling the Greek myth of Orpheus, and a brief piece from a Vertigo promotional comic. Because "Fables & Reflections" partakes of so many elements, some believe it lacks the thematic or artistic consistency that is present even in the other short story collections. Perhaps in an effort to make these differences less apparent, DC has shuffled the issues in