Aesopus (historian)

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For other uses of this name, see Aesop (disambiguation)

Aesopus (Gr. Αίσωπος) was a Greek historian who wrote a life of Alexander the Great. The original is lost, but there is a Latin translation of it by Julius Valerius, of which Franciscus Juretus had, he says, a manuscript.^[1] It was first published, however, by A. Mai from a manuscript in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan in 1817. The title is Itinerarium ad Constantinum Atigustum, etc. : accedunt Julii Valerii Res gestae Alexandri Macedonis, etc. The time when Aesopus lived is un­certain, and even his existence has been doubted.^[2] Mai, in the preface to his edition, contended that the work was written before 389 AD, because the temple of Serapis at Alexandria, which was destroyed by order of Theodosius, is spoken of in the translation as still standing.^[3] But serious objec­tions to this inference have been raised by Letronno,^[4] who refers it to the seventh or eighth century, which the weight of internal evidence would rather point to. The book is full of the most extravagant stories and glaring mistakes, and is a work of no credit.^[5]

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This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology by William Smith (1870).