Aesop's Fables Aesop's Fables Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Of diverse origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to modern times through a number of sources and continue to be reinterpreted in different verbal registers and in popular as well as artistic media. The fables originally belonged to the oral tradition and were not collected for some three centuries after Aesop's death. By that time a variety of other stories, jokes and proverbs were being ascribed
The Hare in flight The Hare in flight The reason for the hare to be in flight is that it is an item of prey for many animals and also subject to hunting by humans. There are three fables of ancient Greek origin that refer to hare chasing, each of which also exemplifies a popular idiom or proverb. Three poems from the Greek Anthology refer to an otherwise unrecorded fable in which a hare on the run from hunting dogs leaps into the sea, only to be seized there by a 'sea-dog', a Mediterranean shark. The first two poems are by Germanicus Caesar, the