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
Ancient Greek literature from ancient Greek literature. These ideas were later, in turn, adopted by other western European writers and literary critics. Ancient Greek literature especially influenced later Greek literature. For instance, the Greek novels influenced the later work "Hero and Leander", written by Musaeus Grammaticus. Ancient Roman writers were acutely aware of the ancient Greek literary legacy and many deliberately emulated the style and formula of Greek classics in their own works. The Roman poet Vergil, for instance, modeled his epic poem "The Aeneid" on "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey". During the Middle Ages, ancient Greek literature was largely forgotten in Western