The Greek Fabulist Aesop

Good day dear Hive community, at the beginning I would like to welcome you all to my new contribution and hope you had a great start into the new week! In this article I would like to go into ancient Greece and introduce a personality that was of great importance.

Aesop was one of the most influential fabulists from ancient Greece, but it is still not clear whether he really existed or not and researchers suspect that he could have lived in a period between 650 BC and 530 BC and presumably he inhabited the island of Samos which is located in the eastern part of the Aegean Sea. Unfortunately too little is known about his life, but it can be assumed that he did not have it easy in his life himself and as a freethinker dealt with many topics that shaped society and according to Herodotus, he led a life as a slave for a long time and later he was freed because other people stood up for him and he decided to use this time to visit other places and collect new impressions. Most of his fables were probably transmitted through oral traditions and contain various messages that should bring people to think and he has long observed human behaviour and typical of his works is to criticise the negative sides of human behaviour and give advice on how to improve this behaviour. In some of his fables, he is strongly committed to nature and conveys to the reader in an artistic way how important the correct handling of plants and animals is and always brings a certain liveliness to his fables and animals as well as plants that otherwise cannot express themselves can in his works often speak and thus express their own grief or suffering. Aesop has managed to present serious and socially relevant topics in a humourous way and thus managed to make people think and his works have reached an important status and are also decisive for the development of poetry.

This artwork that can be seen here was created by the painter Johann Michael Wittmer II. (1802 - 1880) and shows Aesop as he presents his poetry to other people who have gathered around him and the artist brings out this scene well through a high degree of detail and you can really put yourself into the scenario and recognise how he manages to stimulate people to think with his fables. Typical for his writing style is a clear and easy to understand structure as well as a context which is easy to understand and among the best known of his fables are probably those in which animals are in conversation with each other and complain about the suffering that people or other animals do to them and he had the intention to teach people and to show them weaknesses and this principle can also be attributed to other other works in which he wrote a lot about the morality of society. His works always refer to a weakness and contain a message which is expressed in short sentences and the scenes are mostly purely fictional and he never refers to a specific place and in each of his works, he first describes an action which is followed by a backlash which creates a space for discussion or a scene for conflict. Very important for Aesop was always to respond to the parable of living beings and he probably also partly packs his own difficult life in his works and his time in which he was treated badly probably also plays a huge role and even if it is not clear whether he existed or not, he is an important fabulist of history who everyone should know and influenced humanity with his countless messages.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you could learn something new about this interesting topic! I captured these pictures with my Camera Sony Alpha 6000 plus 55-210 mm lens.