Types of Women women to different animals in the poem is not an invention of Semonides, but seems to have been based on a pre-existing folk tale. Aesop's fables were attributed in ancient Greece to the sixth-century BCE slave of that name, but many of them are likely to be much older than that; one of these fables, that of Zeus and Prometheus, has a similar premise to Semonides' poem, and may have been known to him. Later poets tell similar stories, probably also inspired by these folktales. An elegiac fragment by Phocylides describes women as having originated from one of four different
Panchatantra Panchatantra The Panchatantra (IAST: Pañcatantra, , "Five Treatises") is an ancient Indian collection of interrelated animal fables in Sanskrit verse and prose, arranged within a frame story. The surviving work is dated to about 300 BCE, but the fables are likely much more ancient. The text's author is unknown, but has been attributed to Vishnu Sharma in some recensions and Vasubhaga in others, both of which may be fictitious pen names. It is likely a Hindu text, and based on older oral traditions with "animal fables that are as old as we are able to imagine". It is "certainly the