Aesop's Fables have been reinterpretations of the meaning of fables and changes in emphasis over time. Apollonius of Tyana, a 1st-century CE philosopher, is recorded as having said about Aesop: The Greek historian Herodotus mentioned in passing that "Aesop the fable writer" was a slave who lived in Ancient Greece during the 5th century BCE. Among references in other writers, Aristophanes, in his comedy "The Wasps", represented the protagonist Philocleon as having learnt the "absurdities" of Aesop from conversation at banquets; Plato wrote in "Phaedo "that Socrates whiled away his time in prison turning some of Aesop's fables "which he knew" into
Ancient Greek left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of Ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks, interword spacing, modern punctuation, and sometimes mixed case, but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer's Iliad exemplifies the Archaic period of Ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): <poem style="margin-left: 2em"></poem> The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from the Classical period of Ancient Greek: Using the IPA: Transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme: Translated into English: The study of Ancient Greek in European countries in