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
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