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Aesop's Fables or '''''Aesopica''''' refers to a collection of Fables credited to Aesop (''circa'' 620 BC – 560 BC ), a slave and story-teller living in Ancient Greece . Aesop's Fables has also become a Blanket Term for collections of brief fables, usually involving personified animals. The fables remain a popular choice for Moral education of children today. Many stories included in Aesop's Fables, such as '' The Fox And The Grapes '' (from which the Idiom "sour grapes" was derived), '' The Tortoise And The Hare '' and '' The Boy Who Cried Wolf '', are well-known throughout the world. AESOP in the Villa Albani in Rome showing him as an ugly and misshapen man.]] See Also: Aesop Aesop (from the Greek ''Aisopos''), famous for his Fable s, was arguably a slave of Africa n descent who had lived from about 620 to 560 B.C. in Ancient Greece . Little was known about him from credible records, except that he was at one point freed from slavery and that he eventually died in the hands of Delphi ans. In fact, the obscurity shrouding his life has led some scholars to deny his existence altogether. ORIGINS According to the Greek Historian Herodotus , the fables were invented by a Slave named Aesop who lived in Ancient Greece during the 6th Century BC . While some suggested that Aesop did not actually exist, and that the fables attributed to him are Folktale s of unknown origins, Aesop was indeed mentioned in several other Ancient Greek works – 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 jail time turning some of Aesop's fables "which he knew" into verses; and Demetrius Of Phalerum compiled the fables into a set of ten books (''Lopson Aisopeion sunagogai'') for the use of orators, which had been lost. There was also an edition in Elegiac verse by an anonymous author, which was often cited in the '' Suda ''. The first extensive translation of Aesop into Latin was done by Phaedrus , a Freedman of Augustus in this First Century AD , although at least one fable had already been translated by the poet Ennius . Avianus also translated forty two of the fables into Latin elegiacs, probably in the 4th Century AD . The collection under the name of Aesop's Fables evolved from the late Greek version of Babrius , who turned them into Choliamb ic verses, at an uncertain time between 3rd Century BC and 3rd Century AD . In about 100 BC , India n Philosopher Syntipas translated Babrius into Syriac , from where Andreopulos translated back to Greek , since original Greek scripts had all been lost. In the 9th Century , Ignatius Diaconus , created a version of fifty-five fables in choliambic Tetrameter s, into which stories from Oriental sources were added. From these collections the 14th-century monk Maximus Planudes compiled the collection which has come down under the name of Aesop. In 1484 , William Caxton , the first Printer of books in English , printed a version of Aesop's Fables, which was brought up to date by Sir Roger L'Estrange in 1692 . An example of the fables in Caxton's collection follows: Men ought not to leue that thynge whiche is sure & certayne / for hope to haue the vncertayn / as to vs reherceth this fable of a fyssher whiche with his lyne toke a lytyll fysshe whiche sayd to hym / My frend I pray the / doo to me none euylle / ne putte me not to dethe / For now I am nought / for to be eten / but whanne I shalle be grete / yf thow come ageyne hyther / of me shalt thow mowe haue grete auaylle / For thenne I shalle goo with the a good whyle / And the Fyssher sayd to the fysshe Syn I hold the now / thou shalt not scape fro me / For grete foly hit were to me for to seke the here another tyme. The most reproduced modern English translations were made by Rev. George Fyler Townsend ( 1814 – 1900 ). Ben E. Perry , the editor of Aesopic fables of Babrius and Phaedrus for the Loeb Classical Library , compiled a numbered index by type. The edition by Olivia Temple and Robert Temple , titled ''The Complete Fables by Aesop'', although the fables are not complete here since fables from Babrius , Phaedrus and other major ancient sources have been omitted. More recently, in 2002 a translation by Laura Gibbs was published by Oxford World's Classics, entitled ''Aesop's Fables''. This book includes 600 fables and has selections from all the major Greek and Latin sources. AESOP'S FABLES IN OTHER LANGUAGES
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LIST OF SOME FABLES BY AESOP Soviet Propaganda poster to allude to German treachery in Operation Barbarossa .]] Aesop's most famous fables include:
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