Talk:Aesop

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Does anyone else have better information on Aesop? More specifics??

Contents 1 Admins 2 Picture? 3 Aesop's Fables 4 Suggested merge Aesop and Aesop's Fables 5 Unencyclopedic texts added by unknown user 6 Was he black? 7 Dates?

[edit] Admins

Stuff is all gone, page told me to tell you.

Aesop is legendary, not real; the real author of Aesop's fables is Phaedrus. I'll get around to fixing this in the actual article sometime soon, but I thought I'd go ahead and give the heads up beforehand here. Eric Herboso 09:49, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Picture?

That picture is a misrepresentation of Aesop. Enough people ALREADY think he was white.

[edit] Aesop's Fables

i think it's a good idea to move most the info under the Aesop's Fables section to the article Aesop's Fables itself. So i'm going to do it. :) --Plastictv 2 July 2005 14:46 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested merge Aesop and Aesop's Fables

A hash of the material has been made by a well-meaning editor attempting to separate an (apocryphal?) Aesop from Aesop's Fables, There is no Aesop aside from the Fables and there is no single canonic collection of Aesop's Fables, to the surprise of many. I am putting 'merge' suggestions on both articles, so that we can build one strong inclusive introduction to Aesop's Fables as a unified phenomenon. --Wetman 3 July 2005 00:42 (UTC)

See Talk:Aesop's Fables. --Plastictv 3 July 2005 04:03 (UTC)

A cursory glance at this article and its references shows that it is in fact a discussion, not of an "Aesop", but of Aesop's Fables. --Wetman 02:23, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unencyclopedic texts added by unknown user

The following, posted by an unregistered user, is unencyclopedic, opinionated and not very relevant but appears to be original. i feel that it belongs more to the talk page. :) --Plastictv 13:48, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Aesop [rightly considered one of the greatest writers of all time. The first great writer of great short fiction who ever lived, and first among all the literary greats of all time. Widely and variously translated and illustrated. Sadly, so popular for so long that you have to try to find him among many later imitators. (Aesop’s are the pithy ones well founded in reality, with a razor sharp point. A good rule in trying to separate his from the pack is “If it shows the slightest sign of sentimentality, esp about animals, Aesop didn’t write that one.“) Many of his stories have entered the language as popular phrases that reference the point of the story quickly (sour grapes, dog in the manger, etc) and have long been, and are used, daily, by many who have no idea who wrote it. Now that’s real immortality for you if you like. Very few, if any writers reach the level of brevity, wisdom and genius attained by Aesop (probably something to do with his not being paid by the word). Deeply illuminating about humanity, and often clever beyond belief. Knows what a story is and exactly how long, or rather short, it should be. Understands people all too well. It is said the oracle at Delphi put Aesop to death out of jealousy. I‘m not surprised. If most writers had been half as good as Aesop, there‘d have been a lot more martyrs for literature over the years. Yes, you really should read Aesop, it‘s not many writers get thrown over cliffs by the rich and famous for being too good at story-telling. And here we have the earliest and still the greatest fiction writer of them all being taught to fly the hard way by a powerful vested interest. The lesson is clear I think. Certainly it must be clear to writers, for they have nearly all tried never to equal his genius, with great success.]

Aesop Rock is a hip-hop artist who uses Aesop's name to allude to his creative, verbose, imagery soaked lyrics.

[edit] Was he black?

Well, was aesop black? YOYOKER 11:47, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

That's what I would like to know, especially since there is no proof to make such a claim. Basically there are NO actual images or discriptions of him, other then he was "ugly", from his time period, although the ones portrayed by classical Greeks and Romans are not that of a person who was of African origin. So where is the proof that Aesop was of "African" descent? Can anyone provide legit sources? And please do not tell me Maximus Planudes 'cause that's like me, a 20th century person, giving a description of Caesar, who lived centuries before me and having it pass as first hand accounts thousands of centuries down the line; given the fact that Planudes lived centuries after Aesop and he spoke a dialect of Greek different from the dialects which were around during the time of Aesop, I totally would not call him a "creditable" source. From what I know traditionally Aesop was a Greek slave. Oh, and the little doozey below is packed with errors I don't know were to beginning:

His given name, Aesop, is the Ancient Greek word for "Ethiop", the archaic word for a dark-skinned person of African origin.

That explanation above makes as much sense as Mr. Portokalos quote: "Kimono, kimono, kimono. Ha! Of course! Kimono is come from the Greek word himona, is mean winter. So, what do you wear in the wintertime to stay warm? A robe. You see: robe, himona=kimono. There you go!" 2+2=5.

The word Aesop did not exist in an "archaic" form the way its described here because there never WAS such an "Archaic" word to mean what it suggested in this article. Archaic refers to the period in Greece which followed the dark ages, 800 BCE to about 500 BCE. There were numerious Greek dialects which were spoken at that time. Each dialectic then branches out to its individual dialects, each dialect can in turn be divided into countless local idioms, with their own numerous idiomatic variations. New historical finds and discoveries have given modern scholars a better understand of the ancient Greek dialects which existed back then, more so then what a 13th century monk would have understood. Ancient Greek "archaic" dialects are known to scholars. So which dialect is "Aesop" suppose to be derived from to mean "Ethiop", hmmm? Is the Attic, Ionic, Arcadocypriot, Aeolic, Achaean, North-Western, Doric, Homeric Greek? I'd like to hear this fable. [rolleyes] So what is Aesop's ethymology and from which of the many Greek dialects is it derived from? Cause it sure isn't what is suggested in this article...the ancient Greek words Αισωπος and Αιθίοψ are not even close. If you break down the word Αιθίοψ(the actual ancient Greek word for Ethiop) its derived from two Greek words: the Greek αιθ "of burnt aether=Greek word for burn/shine", and the Greek οψ "the face or visage." Put the two together and you get Αιθίοψ=of burn face. The Greek name Αισωπος(Aisopos aka Aesop), unlike what is falsely claimed in this article, does not have such a meaning. This article really needs to be reworked and facted based on certain things. ~Mallaccaos, 2 May 2006

"Aesop" has no authentic historic existence apart from "Aesop's Fables", a collection that has always varied in its content according to which manuscripts you follow, so that there is no corpus: see the article Aesop's Fables. Any "personal" information about an "Aesop" is fantasy. The urgent concerns over the tint of a person's skin are modern. So the question "was Aesop black?" is based on so many misconceptions that it is unanswerable. --Wetman 08:37, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

That's exactly what I was trying to point out above. The word which this article was trying to claim his name meant Ethiopian in archaic Greek was false. There is no personal info which describes him, so the assumption that he was of "African" descent or whatever is wrong. I think saying: "The place of Aesop's birth is uncertain – Thrace, Phrygia, Aethiopia, Samos, Athens and Sardis all claim the honour." is more appropriate and leaves the door open to him being from Aethiopia or Athenian or Phrygian or whatever, which is s more accurate claim then just claiming him of African descent when we do not know. ~Mallaccaos, 8 May 2006

Given that any information about this man seem to be anecdotal at best, wouldn't a modern work of an academic analysing the works be just a good as source as what we've got. The things in the fables and the way they are put seem pretty un hellenic to me in their subjects and style. The way he makes Zeus as a character would indicate that he was from pretty far away. Certainally these tales were 'Exotic' enough to the ears of Planudes for him to picture a 'dark sknned thick lipped' Aesop, and would have also sounded as such to a Greek audience. Clearly, I don't have the eloquotion, knowledge of literature or geography to produce this theoretical article, but things like this are important to African historians and one may well be produced soon, and then we will have enough to comment on to at least acknowledge some people feel this way without it being all weasel words. Courtesy of Gavla 13:33, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I've found a legitmate scholarly source making the argument that he was a Black African, and have added a reference to it. - SimonP 21:16, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

How coulda "legitimate" source discuss the Blackness or not of a phantom figure for whom there is no accepted single corpus of work? Aesopica is simply a genre of Greco-Roman animal fables. Reading the introduction to the Loeb Classical Library, or any other good edition of Aesopica will help return one to reality.--Wetman 00:26, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dates?

The section on his life does not mention dates (although the intro mentions something). I realize that this info is highly debated but the section on his life should at least mention the conjecture about when he lived (even it is redundant with the intro). --Mcorazao 20:10, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

How could one apply dates to a phantom figure for whom there is no accepted single corpus of work? Aesopica is simply a genre of Greco-Roman animal fables. Reading the introduction to the Loeb Classical Library, or any other good edition of Aesopica will help return one to reality.--Wetman 00:26, 5 March 2007 (UTC)