98-481: Aesopian may refer to: Aesop (c. 620–564 BCE), Ancient Greek fabulist Aesopian language , communications that convey an innocent meaning to outsiders but hold a concealed meaning to informed members of a conspiracy or underground movement Aesopian synagogue , a synagogue built with its true purpose disguised Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with
196-498: A votive offering which later became a constellation, the Coma Berenices ("Hair of Berenice"). Another notable story from the second half of the work is the love story of Acontius and Cydippe . At the close of his Aetia , Callimachus wrote that he would proceed to a more pedestrian field of poetry. By this, he referred to his collection of 13 Iambs , drawing on an established tradition of iambic poetry whose defining feature
294-508: A "better work" ( Latin : maius opus ). Vergil's formulation leaves open whether he sought to write an epic with the refinement called for by Callimachus or whether he had turned his back on Callimacheanism as his career progressed. Having referred to himself as a "Roman Callimachus" ( Latin : Romanus Callimachus ), the elegist Propertius follows the example of Callimachus's Aetia by introducing obscure mythological material and numerous recondite details into his erotic history of Rome. At
392-508: A "writer of fables" and Aristophanes speaks of "reading" Aesop, but that might simply have been a compilation of fables ascribed to him. Various Classical authors name Aesop as the originator of fables. Sophocles , in a poem addressed to Euripides , made reference to the North Wind and the Sun . Socrates , while in prison, turned some of the fables into verse, of which Diogenes Laërtius records
490-591: A degree of acculturation . This is evident in Isango Portobello 's 2010 production of the play Aesop's Fables at the Fugard Theatre in Cape Town , South Africa. Based on a script by British playwright Peter Terson (1983), it was radically adapted by the director Mark Dornford-May as a musical using native African instrumentation, dance and stage conventions. Although Aesop is portrayed as Greek, and dressed in
588-457: A dwarfish hunchback, and his facial features appear to accord with his statement in the text (p. 7), "I am a Negro." The Spaniard Diego Velázquez painted a portrait of Aesop, dated 1639–40 and now in the collection of the Museo del Prado . The presentation is anachronistic and Aesop, while arguably not handsome, displays no physical deformities. It was partnered by another portrait of Menippus ,
686-515: A few lines to extensive narratives, they are unified by a common metre—the elegiac couplet . With few exceptions, the collection is the earliest extant source for most of the myths it presents. Throughout the work, the poet's voice repeatedly intrudes into his narratives to offer comments on the dramatic situation. This pattern is described by the Hellenist Kathryn Gutzwiller as one of the poem's most influential features. The poem
784-406: A folkbook, a work that belonged to no one, and the occasional writer felt free to modify as it might suit him." Multiple, sometimes contradictory, versions of this work exist. The earliest known version was probably composed in the 1st century CE, but the story may have circulated in different versions for centuries before it was committed to writing, and certain elements can be shown to originate in
882-497: A gift for clever storytelling, which he uses alternately to assist and confound his master, Xanthus, embarrassing the philosopher in front of his students and even sleeping with his wife. After interpreting a portent for the people of Samos, Aesop is given his freedom and acts as an emissary between the Samians and King Croesus. Later he travels to the courts of Lycurgus of Babylon and Nectanabo of Egypt – both imaginary rulers – in
980-455: A goatherd. He often mixes different metaphors to create effects of "wit and incongruity", such as when a laurel tree is described as "glaring like a wild bull". Ferguson also notes the poems' witty use of proverbs in dialectic passages of dialogue. Callimachus made only one attempt at writing a narrative poem, a mythological epic entitled Hecale . Since the poem is estimated to run to have had around 1000 lines, it constitutes an epyllion ,
1078-467: A known author that refers to Aesop's appearance is Himerius in the 4th century, who says that Aesop "was laughed at and made fun of, not because of some of his tales but on account of his looks and the sound of his voice." The evidence from both of these sources is dubious, since Himerius lived some 800 years after Aesop and his image of Aesop may have come from The Aesop Romance , which is essentially fiction; but whether based on fact or not, at some point
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#17328475843721176-467: A man named Iadmon; that he must eventually have been freed, since he argued as an advocate for a wealthy Samian; and that he met his end in the city of Delphi . Plutarch tells us that Aesop came to Delphi on a diplomatic mission from King Croesus of Lydia, that he insulted the Delphians, that he was sentenced to death on a trumped-up charge of temple theft, and that he was thrown from a cliff (after which
1274-613: A mention in Herodotus 2.134-5 that Aesop had once been owned by the same master as Rhodopis, and the statement in Pliny 36.17 that she was Aesop's concubine as well, the play introduced Rodope as Aesop's mistress, a romantic motif that would be repeated in later popular depictions of Aesop. Sir John Vanbrugh 's comedy "Aesop" was premièred at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, London, in 1697 and
1372-460: A negro" found on several coins from ancient Delphi (with specimens dated as early as 520 BCE) might depict Aesop, presumably to commemorate (and atone for) his execution at Delphi, but Theodor Panofka supposed the head to be a portrait of Delphos , founder of Delphi, a view which was repeated later by Frank Snowden , who nevertheless notes that the arguments which have been advanced are not sufficient to establish such an identification. In 1876
1470-435: A painting of Aesop surrounded by the animals of his fables. None of these images have survived. According to Philostratus: The Fables are gathering about Aesop, being fond of him because he devotes himself to them. For ... he checks greed and rebukes insolence and deceit, and in all this some animal is his mouthpiece—a lion or a fox or a horse ... and not even the tortoise is dumb—that through them children may learn
1568-432: A particular god; examples of this genre can be found in most Greek lyric poets . A typical hymn would contain an invocation of the god, praise of his or her attributes, and a concluding prayer with a request for a favour. Callimachus wrote six such hymns, which can be divided into two groups: his Hymn to Apollo , to Demeter and to Athena are considered mimetic because they present themselves as live re-enactments of
1666-617: A period of relative poverty while working as a schoolteacher in the suburbs of the city. The truthfulness of this claim is disputed by the classicist Alan Cameron who describes it as "almost certainly outright fiction". Callimachus then entered into the patronage of the Ptolemies , the Greek ruling dynasty of Egypt, and was employed at the Library of Alexandria . According to the Suda , his career coincided with
1764-472: A possible diplomatic mission for Croesus and a visit to Periander "are consistent with the year of Aesop's death." Still problematic is the story by Phaedrus, which has Aesop, in Athens, relating the fable of the frogs who asked for a king , because Phaedrus has this happening during the reign of Peisistratos , which occurred decades after the presumed date of Aesop's death. Along with the scattered references in
1862-577: A prominent family in the Greek city of Cyrene in modern-day Libya , he was educated in Alexandria, the capital of the Ptolemaic kings of Egypt . After working as a schoolteacher in the city, he came under the patronage of King Ptolemy II Philadelphus and was employed at the Library of Alexandria where he compiled the Pinakes , a comprehensive catalogue of all Greek literature. He is believed to have lived into
1960-521: A religious ritual in which both the speaker and the audience are imagined to take part. The Hymn to Zeus , to Demeter , and to Delos are viewed as non-mimetic since they do not re-create a ritual situation. It is contested among scholars of ancient literature whether Callimachus's hymns had any real religious significance. The dominant view holds that they were literary creations to be read exclusively as poetry, though some scholars have linked individual elements to contemporary ritual practice. This issue
2058-422: A sanctuary to Zeus in honour of his host. Since most of Callimachus's poetry is critical of epic as a genre, there has been some speculation about why he chose to write an epic poem after all. The author of the scholia , an ancient commentary on the work of Callimachus, stated that Callimachus abandoned his reluctance after being ridiculed for not writing lengthy poems. This explanation was probably derived from
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#17328475843722156-579: A satirical philosopher equally of slave-origin. A similar philosophers series was painted by fellow Spaniard Jusepe de Ribera , who is credited with two portraits of Aesop. "Aesop, poet of the fables" is in the El Escorial gallery and pictures him as an author leaning on a staff by a table which holds copies of his work, one of them a book with the name Hissopo on the cover. The other is in the Museo de Prado, dated 1640–50 and titled "Aesop in beggar's rags." There he
2254-431: A section that appears to borrow heavily from the romance of Ahiqar . The story ends with Aesop's journey to Delphi, where he angers the citizens by telling insulting fables, is sentenced to death and, after cursing the people of Delphi, is forced to jump to his death. Aesop may not have written his fables. The Aesop Romance claims that he wrote them down and deposited them in the library of Croesus; Herodotus calls Aesop
2352-432: A shorter form of epic poetry dealing with topics not traditionally present in larger-scale works. It recounts a story about the Greek hero Theseus , who, after liberating the city of Marathon from a destructive bull, was hosted by a poor but kindly old woman named Hecale . They form a friendship as she recounts her former life as a member of the upper class . At the end of the poem, Theseus establishes an annual feast and
2450-485: A slave. Perhaps the most elaborate celebration of Aesop and his fables was the labyrinth of Versailles , a hedge maze constructed for Louis XIV with 39 fountains with lead sculptures depicting Aesop's fables . A statue of Aesop by Pierre Le Gros the Elder , depicted as a hunchback, stood on a pedestal at the entrance. Finished in 1677, the labyrinth was demolished in 1778, but the statue of Aesop survives and can be seen in
2548-467: A small fragment. The early Roman playwright and poet Ennius also rendered at least one of Aesop's fables in Latin verse, of which the last two lines still exist. Collections of what are claimed to be Aesop's Fables were transmitted by a series of authors writing in both Greek and Latin. Demetrius of Phalerum made what may have been the earliest, probably in prose ( Αἰσοπείων α ), contained in ten books for
2646-618: A surge in scholarly interest beginning toward the end of the 20th century, some attempt has been made to determine the nature and content of the very earliest fables which may be most closely linked to the historic Aesop. The anonymously authored Aesop Romance begins with a vivid description of Aesop's appearance, saying he was "of loathsome aspect ... potbellied, misshapen of head, snub-nosed, swarthy, dwarfish, bandy-legged, short-armed, squint-eyed, liver-lipped—a portentous monstrosity," or as another translation has it, "a faulty creation of Prometheus when half-asleep." The earliest text by
2744-609: A translation of the fables ( Esopo no Fabulas , 1593) that included the biography of Aesop. This was then taken up by Japanese printers and taken through several editions under the title Isopo Monogatari . Even when Europeans were expelled from Japan and Christianity proscribed, this text survived, in part because the figure of Aesop had been assimilated into the culture and depicted in woodcuts as dressed in Japanese costume. Ancient sources mention two statues of Aesop, one by Aristodemus and another by Lysippus , and Philostratus describes
2842-490: A unique style of poetry: favouring small, recondite and even obscure topics, he dedicated himself to small-scale poetry and refused to write longwinded epic poetry , the most prominent literary art of his day. Callimachus and his aesthetic philosophy became an important point of reference for Roman poets of the late Republic and the early Empire . Catullus , Horace , Vergil , Propertius , and Ovid saw his poetry as one of their "principal model[s]" and engaged with it in
2940-421: A variety of genres. This is made explicit in the final poem of the collection, where the poet compares himself to a carpenter who is praised for crafting many different objects. The Iambs are notable for their vivid language. Callimachus couches his aesthetic criticism in vivid imagery taken from the natural and social world: rival scholars are compared to wasps swarming from the ground and to flies resting on
3038-561: A variety of ways. Modern classical scholars view him as one of the most influential Greek poets. According to the Hellenist Kathryn Gutzwiller , he "reinvented Greek poetry for the Hellenistic age by devising a personal style that came, through its manifestations in Roman poetry, to influence the entire tradition of modern literature". An entry in the Suda , a 10th-century Byzantine encyclopaedia ,
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3136-545: A wide range of topics. While some of them are dedicatory or sepulchral , others touch on erotic and purely literary themes. Most of them were transmitted in the Palatine Anthology , a 10th-century manuscript discovered in 1606 at Heidelberg containing a collection of Greek epigrams and poems. Often written from a first-person perspective, the Epigrams offer a great variety of styles and draw on different branches of
3234-457: A work now lost. Avianus (of uncertain date, perhaps the 4th century) translated 42 of the fables into Latin elegiacs. The 4th-century grammarian Dositheus Magister also made a collection of Aesop's Fables, now lost. Aesop's Fables continued to be revised and translated through the ensuing centuries, with the addition of material from other cultures, so that the body of fables known today bears little relation to those Aesop originally told. With
3332-520: A writer in a household setting, handsome and wearing an earring. The 20th century saw the publication of three novels about Aesop. A. D. Wintle 's Aesop (London: Gollancz, 1943) was a plodding fictional biography described in a review of the time as so boring that it makes the fables embedded in it seem "complacent and exasperating." The two others, preferring the fictional Life to any approach to veracity, are genre works . In John Vornholt 's The Fabulist (New York: Avon, 1993), "an ugly, mute slave
3430-556: Is "worthless as to the reliability of Aesop as 'Ethiopian. ' " The notion of Aesop's African origin later reappeared in Britain, as attested by the lively figurine of a negro from the Chelsea porcelain factory which appeared in its Aesop series in the mid-18th century. In 1856 William Martin Leake repeated the false etymological linkage of "Aesop" with "Aethiop" when he suggested that the "head of
3528-456: Is also shown at a table, holding a sheet of paper in his left hand and writing with the other. While the former hints at his lameness and deformed back, the latter only emphasises his poverty. In 1690, French playwright Edmé Boursault 's Les fables d'Esope (later known as Esope à la ville ) premiered in Paris. A sequel, Esope à la cour (Aesop at Court ), was first performed in 1701; drawing on
3626-484: Is as widely known as any that has come down from Graeco-Roman antiquity [yet] it is far from certain whether a historical Aesop ever existed ... in the latter part of the fifth century something like a coherent Aesop legend appears, and Samos seems to be its home. The earliest Greek sources, including Aristotle , indicate that Aesop was born around 620 BCE in the Greek colony of Mesembria . A number of later writers from
3724-557: Is clever in representing the persons of the Fables. For it combines animals with men to make a chorus about Aesop, composed of the actors in his fables; and the fox is painted as leader of the chorus. With the advent of printing in Europe, various illustrators tried to recreate this scene. One of the earliest was in Spain's La vida del Ysopet con sus fabulas historiadas (1489, see above). In France there
3822-504: Is delivered from wretchedness by the gods and blessed with a wondrous voice. [It is] the tale of a most unlikely adventurer, dispatched to far and perilous realms to battle impossible beasts and terrible magicks." The other novel was George S. Hellman's Peacock's Feather (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1931). Its unlikely plot made it the perfect vehicle for the 1946 Hollywood spectacular, Night in Paradise . A dashing (not ugly) Turhan Bey
3920-414: Is further complicated by Callimachus's purposeful amalgamation of fiction and potential real-world performance. The Greek word αἴτιον ( aition , 'cause') means an attempt to explain contemporary phenomena with a story from the mythical past . The title of Callimachus's work can be roughly translated into English as "origins". The Aetia contains a collection of origin stories. Ranging in size from
4018-449: Is seated under a tree and turns his head to look at her. His right arm rests on a cage of doves, as he points to the captive state of both of them. Otherwise, the picture illustrates how different the couple are. Rhodope and Aesop lean on opposite elbows, gesture with opposite hands, and while Rhodope's hand is held palm upwards, Aesop's is held palm downwards. She stands while he sits; he is dressed in dark clothes, she in lighter shades. When
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4116-426: Is sometimes subsumed under the term of Alexandrianism , describing the entirety of Greek literature written in Alexandria during the 3rd century BC. In spite of their differences, his work shares many characteristics with that of his contemporaries including the didactic poet Aratus , the epicist Apollonius of Rhodes , and the pastoral poet Theocritus . They all interacted with earlier Greek literature, especially
4214-495: Is the main source about the life of Callimachus. Although the entry contains factual inaccuracies, it enables the re-construction of his biography by providing some otherwise unattested information. Callimachus was born into a prominent family in Cyrene , a Greek city on the coast of modern-day Libya. He refers to himself as "son of Battus" ( Ancient Greek : Βαττιάδης , romanized : Battiades ), but this may be an allusion to
4312-516: Is thought to have had about 4,000 lines and is organised into four individual books, which are divided in halves on stylistic grounds. In the first book, Callimachus describes a dream in which, as a young man, he was transported by the Muses to Mount Helicon in Boeotia . The young poet interrogates the goddesses about the origins of unusual present day customs. This dialogue frames all aetiologies presented in
4410-499: Is ugly, with long hair, bald head, and unkempt, scraggly beard, and is clearly uncaring of his appearance." Some archaeologists have suggested that the Hellenistic statue of a bearded hunchback with an intellectual appearance, discovered in the 18th century and pictured at the head of this article, also depicts Aesop, although alternative identifications have since been put forward. Aesop began to appear early in literary works. The 4th-century-BCE Athenian playwright Alexis put Aesop on
4508-566: The Perry Index , concluded that, due to problems of chronological reconciliation dating the death of Aesop and the reign of Croesus, "everything in the ancient testimony about Aesop that pertains to his associations with either Croesus or with any of the so-called Seven Wise Men of Greece must be reckoned as literary fiction." Perry likewise dismissed accounts of Aesop's death in Delphi as mere fictional legends. However, later research has established that
4606-604: The Victory of Berenice . Composed in the style of a Pindaric Ode , the self-contained poem celebrates queen Berenice's victory in the Nemean Games . Enveloped within the epinician narrative is an aetiology of the games themselves. The end of Book 4 and the Aetia as a whole is marked by another court poem, the Lock of Berenice . In it, Callimachus relates how the queen gave a lock of her hair as
4704-794: The 2nd-century satirist Lucian ; when the narrator arrives at the Island of the Blessed, he finds that "Aesop the Phrygian was there, too; he acts as their jester." Beginning with the Heinrich Steinhowel edition of 1476, many translations of the fables into European languages, which also incorporated Planudes 's "Life of Aesop", featured illustrations depicting him as a hunchback. The 1687 edition of Aesop's Fables with His Life: in English, French and Latin included 31 engravings by Francis Barlow that show him as
4802-488: The 4th century BCE. Scholars long dismissed any historical or biographical validity in The Aesop Romance ; widespread study of the work began only toward the end of the 20th century. In The Aesop Romance , Aesop is a slave of Phrygian origin on the island of Samos, and extremely ugly. At first he lacks the power of speech, but after showing kindness to a priestess of Isis , is granted by the goddess not only speech but
4900-568: The Delphians suffered pestilence and famine). Before this fatal episode, Aesop met with Periander of Corinth , where Plutarch has him dining with the Seven Sages of Greece and sitting beside his friend Solon , whom he had met in Sardis. (Leslie Kurke suggests that Aesop was himself "a popular contender for inclusion" in the list of Seven Sages.) In 1965, Ben Edwin Perry , an Aesop scholar and compiler of
4998-571: The Grapes" 1953) marked Aesop's entry into Brazilian theatre. The three-act play was by Guilherme Figueiredo and has been performed in many countries, including a videotaped production in China in 2000 under the title Hu li yu pu tao or 狐狸与葡萄 . The play is described as an allegory about freedom with Aesop as the main character. Occasions on which Aesop was played as black include Richard Durham 's Destination Freedom radio show broadcast (1949), where
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#17328475843725096-634: The Italian painter Roberto Fontana portrayed the fabulist as black in Aesop Narrates His Fables to the Handmaids of Xanthus . When the painting was shown at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1878, a French critic was dubious: "Why is M. Fontana's Aesop ... black as an Ethiopian? Perhaps M. Fontana knows more about Aesop than we do, which would not be difficult." The idea that Aesop
5194-501: The Roman imperial period (including Phaedrus , who adapted the fables into Latin) say that he was born in Phrygia . The 3rd-century poet Callimachus called him "Aesop of Sardis ," and the later writer Maximus of Tyre called him "the sage of Lydia ." By Aristotle and Herodotus we are told that Aesop was a slave in Samos ; that his slave masters were first a man named Xanthus, and then
5292-606: The allegory are two reasons why Callimachus did not write in this genre: firstly, to Callimachus, poetry required a high level of refinement which could not be sustained over the course of a drawn-out work; secondly, most of his contemporaries were writers of epic, creating an over-saturation of the genre which he sought to avoid. Instead, he was interested in recondite, experimental, learned and even obscure topics. His poetry nevertheless surpasses epic in its allusions to previous literature. Although Callimachus attempted to differentiate himself from other poets, his aesthetic philosophy
5390-509: The ancient sources regarding the life and death of Aesop, there is a highly fictional biography now commonly called The Aesop Romance (also known as the Vita or The Life of Aesop or The Book of Xanthus the Philosopher and Aesop His Slave ), "an anonymous work of Greek popular literature composed around the second century of our era ... Like The Alexander Romance , The Aesop Romance became
5488-463: The book are the stories Busiris , king of Egypt , and Phalaris , the tyrant of Akragas , who were known for their excessive cruelty. The second half of the Aetia does not follow the pattern established in Books 1 and 2. Instead, individual aetiologies are set in a variety of dramatic situations and do not form a contiguous narrative. The books are framed by two well known narratives: Book 3 opens with
5586-461: The broad categories of 'poetry' and 'prose'. Both categories were further broken down into precise subcategories. For poets, these included, among others, 'drama', 'epic', and 'lyric'; for prose writers, 'philosophy', 'oratory', 'history', and 'medicine'. Entries were sorted alphabetically, giving an author's biography and a list of his works. According to the classicist Lionel Casson , the Pinakes were
5684-404: The business of life. So the Fables, honoured because of Aesop, gather at the doors of the wise man to bind fillets about his head and to crown him with a victor's crown of wild olive. And Aesop, methinks, is weaving some fable; at any rate his smile and his eyes fixed on the ground indicate this. The painter knows that for the composition of fables relaxation of the spirit is needed. And the painting
5782-655: The characterization of the main character. Frequent allusions to the Odyssey and the Iliad appear, for example reference to Antilochus in Hymn 6. Some Homeric influences can be seen through the use of Homeric hapaxes , such as katōmadian. Callimachus and his aesthetic philosophy became an important point of reference for Roman poets of the late Republic and the early Empire . Catullus , Horace , Vergil , Propertius , and Ovid saw his poetry as one of their "principal model[s]". Due to
5880-479: The city's mythological founder Battus rather than to his father. His grandfather, also named Callimachus, had served the city as a general. His mother's name was Megatima, falsely given as Mesatma by the Suda . His unknown date of birth is placed around 310 BC. During the 280s, Callimachus is thought to have studied under the philosopher Praxiphanes and the grammarian Hermocrates at Alexandria , an important centre of Greek culture. He appears to have experienced
5978-430: The complexity of his poetic production, Roman authors did not attempt to reproduce Callimachus's poems but creatively reused them in their own work. Vergil, in his Aeneid , an epic about the wanderings of Aeneas , repeatedly alludes to Callimachus when contemplating the nature of his own poetry. Having followed Callimachus's example by rejecting traditional epic poetics in his 6th Eclogue , Vergil labels his Aeneid as
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#17328475843726076-498: The diminutive fabulist seated on a high pedestal, surrounded by an enraptured crowd. When Julian Russell Story 's Aesop's Fables was exhibited in 1884, Henry James wrote to a correspondent: "Julian Story has a very clever & big Subject— Aesop telling fables ... He has a real talent but ... carries even further (with less ability) Sargent 's danger—that of seeing the ugliness of things." Conversely, Aesop Composing His Fables by Charles Landseer (1799–1879) depicts
6174-561: The drama "The Death of Aesop" portrayed him as an Ethiopian. In 1971, Bill Cosby starred as Aesop in the TV production Aesop's Fables – The Tortoise and the Hare . He was also played by Mhlekahi Mosiea in the 2010 South Africa adaptation of British playwright Peter Terson 's musical Aesop's Fables . Callimachus Callimachus ( Ancient Greek : Καλλίμαχος , romanized : Kallimachos ; c. 310 – c. 240 BC )
6272-586: The epigrammatic tradition. According to the Callimachus scholar Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, "[t]heir intelligent play on language, meter, and word placement" have placed the poems among the most prominent works of the Hellenistic period . Among the oldest forms of religious writing, hymns were "formal addresses to a god or group of gods on behalf of a community". Cultic hymns were written and performed in honour of
6370-472: The exception of his Epigrams and Hymns . All other works mentioned below have been preserved in fragments . Callimachus was an admirer of Homer , whom he regarded as impossible to imitate. This could be the reason why he focused on short poems. Epigrams , brief, forceful poems originally written on stone and on votive offerings , were already an established as a form of literature by the 3rd century BC. Callimachus wrote at least 60 individual epigrams on
6468-554: The first book. The stories in the book include those of Linus and Coroebus , Theiodamas, king of the Dryopes and the voyage of the Argonauts . The second book continues the first's dialectic structure. It may have been set at a symposium at Alexandria , where Callimachus worked as a librarian and scholar . Since most of its content has been lost, little is known about Book 2. The only aetiology commonly assumed to have been placed in
6566-501: The first comprehensive bibliographic resource for Greek literature and a "vital reference tool" for using the Alexandrian Library. In his poetry, Callimachus espoused an aesthetic philosophy that has become known as Callimacheanism. He favoured small-scale topics over large and prominent ones, and refinement over long works of poetry. At the beginning of the Aetia , he summarised his poetic programme in an allegory spoken by
6664-431: The god Apollo : "my good poet, feed my victim as fat as possible, but keep your Muse slender. This, too, I order from you: tread the way that wagons do not trample. Do not drive in the same tracks as others or on a wide road but on an untrodden path, even if yours is more narrow." The allegory is directed against the predominant poetic form of the day: heroic epic , which could run to dozens of books in length. Contained in
6762-633: The idea of an ugly, even deformed Aesop took hold in popular imagination. Scholars have begun to examine why and how this "physiognomic tradition" developed. A much later tradition depicts Aesop as a black African from Aethiopia . The first known promulgator of the idea was Planudes , a Byzantine scholar of the 13th century who made a recension of The Aesop Romance in which it is conjectured that Aesop might have been Ethiopian, given his name. But according to Gert-Jan van Dijk, "Planudes' derivation of 'Aesop' from 'Aethiopian' is ... etymologically incorrect," and Frank Snowden says that Planudes' account
6860-435: The library's shelf-lists. His catalogue, named Pinakes after the plural of the Greek for 'tablet' ( Ancient Greek : πίναξ , romanized : pinax ), amounted to 120 volumes or five times the length of Homer 's Iliad . Although the Pinakes have not survived the end of antiquity, scholars have reconstructed their content from references in surviving classical literature. Authors and their works were divided into
6958-411: The most important attributes of a poet. Classical scholars place Callimachus among the most influential Greek poets. According to Kathryn Gutzwiller, he "reinvented Greek poetry for the Hellenistic age by devising a personal style that came, through its manifestations in Roman poetry, to influence the entire tradition of modern literature". She also writes that his lasting importance is demonstrated by
7056-503: The poems of Homer and Hesiod . Drawing on the Library of Alexandria, they all displayed an interest in intellectual pursuits, and they all attempted to revive neglected forms of poetry. Callimachus used both direct and indirect characterization in his works. The use of comparisons and similes is rather sparse. The use of intertextuality is observed in Hymn 6 , where descriptions of other characters are offered in order to provide contrast to
7154-459: The poet's own intimation at the start of the Aetia and is therefore of limited authority. According to Cameron, Callimachus may have conceived the Hecale as a model epic according to his own tastes. When working at the Library of Alexandria, Callimachus was responsible for the library's cataloguing. In this function, he compiled a detailed bibliography of all existing Greek literature deriving from
7252-472: The reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus , who became sole ruler of Egypt in 283 BC. Classicist John Ferguson puts the latest date of Callimachus's establishment at the imperial court at 270 BC. Despite the lack of precise sources, the outlines of Callimachus's working life can be gathered from his poetry. Poems belonging to his period of economic hardship indicate that he began writing in the 280s BC, while his poem Aetia shows signs of having been composed in
7350-449: The reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes , who ascended to the throne in 246 BC. Contemporary references suggest that Callimachus was writing until about 240 BC, and Ferguson finds it likely that he died by 235 BC, at which time he would have been 75 years old. According to the Suda , Callimachus wrote more than 800 individual works in prose and poetry. The vast majority of his literary production, including all prose output, has been lost with
7448-558: The reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes . Although Callimachus wrote prolifically in prose and poetry , only a small number of his poetical texts have been preserved. His main works are the Aetia , a four-book aetiological poem, six religious hymns , around 60 epigrams , a collection of satirical iambs , and a narrative poem entitled Hecale . Callimachus shared many characteristics with his Alexandrian contemporaries Aratus , Apollonius of Rhodes and Theocritus , but professed to adhere to
7546-411: The representation of Aesop as an ugly slave emerged. The later tradition which makes Aesop a black African resulted in depictions ranging from 17th-century engravings to a television portrayal by a black comedian. In general, beginning in the 20th century, plays have shown Aesop as a slave, but not ugly, while movies and television shows (such as The Bullwinkle Show ) have depicted him as neither ugly nor
7644-435: The same time, he challenges Callimachean learnedness by depicting lowbrow details of contemporary nightlife such as strippers and dwarfs kept for entertainment purposes. Ovid described Callimachus as "lacking in genius but strong in art" ( Latin : Quamvis ingenio non valet, arte valet ). His statement, though seemingly a criticism of the poet, pays homage to Callimachus's belief that technical skill and erudition were
7742-414: The short Greek tunic, the all-black production contextualises the story in the recent history of South Africa . The former slave, we are told "learns that liberty comes with responsibility as he journeys to his own freedom, joined by the animal characters of his parable-like fables." There had already been an example of Asian acculturation in 17th-century Japan. There Portuguese missionaries had introduced
7840-490: The stage in his comedy "Aesop", of which a few lines survive ( Athenaeus 10.432); conversing with Solon, Aesop praises the Athenian practice of adding water to wine. Leslie Kurke suggests that Aesop may have been "a staple of the comic stage" of this era. The 3rd-century-BCE poet Poseidippus of Pella wrote a narrative poem entitled "Aesopia" (now lost), in which Aesop's fellow slave Rhodopis (under her original name Doricha)
7938-523: The stories of the trickster Br'er Rabbit told by African slaves in North America. In Ian Colvin 's introduction to Aesop in Politics (1914), for example, the fabulist is bracketed with Uncle Remus , "For both were slaves, and both were black." The traditional role of the slave Aesop as "a kind of culture hero of the oppressed" is further promoted by the fictional Life , emerging "as a how-to handbook for
8036-442: The strong reactions his poetry elicited from contemporaries and posterity. Richard L. Hunter , an expert on Greek literature of the Hellenistic period, states that the selective reception of Callimachus through Roman poets has led to a simplified picture of his poetry. Hunter writes that modern critics have drawn up a false dichotomy between the "content-laden and socially engaged poetry of the archaic and classical periods " and
8134-482: The successful manipulation of superiors." Such a perception was reinforced at the popular level by the 1971 TV production Aesop's Fables in which Bill Cosby played Aesop. In that mixture of live action and animation, Aesop tells fables that differentiate between realistic and unrealistic ambition and his version there of " The Tortoise and the Hare " illustrates how to take advantage of an opponent's over-confidence. On other continents Aesop has occasionally undergone
8232-560: The theme of their relationship was taken up again by Walter Savage Landor , in the two dialogues between the pair in his series of Imaginary Conversations , it is the difference in their ages that is most emphasised. Théodore de Banville 's 1893 comedy Ésope later dealt with Aesop and Rhodopis at the court of King Croesus in Sardis. Along with Fontana's Aesop Narrates His Fables to the Handmaids of Xanthus , two other 19th-century paintings show Aesop surrounded by listeners. Johann Michael Wittmer 's Aesop Tells His Fables (1879) depicts
8330-617: The title Aesopian . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aesopian&oldid=591461049 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Aesop Aesop ( / ˈ iː s ɒ p / EE -sop or / ˈ eɪ s ɒ p / AY -sop ; Ancient Greek : Αἴσωπος , Aísōpos ; c. 620–564 BCE; formerly rendered as Æsop )
8428-439: The traditional description of him as a strikingly ugly slave ( δοῦλος ) who by his cleverness acquires freedom and becomes an adviser to kings and city-states. Older spellings of his name have included Esop(e) and Isope . Depictions of Aesop in popular culture over the last 2,500 years have included many works of art and his appearance as a character in numerous books, films, plays, and television programs. The name of Aesop
8526-404: The use of orators, although that has since been lost. Next appeared an edition in elegiac verse, cited by the Suda , but the author's name is unknown. Phaedrus , a freedman of Augustus , rendered the fables into Latin in the 1st century CE. At about the same time Babrius turned the fables into Greek choliambics . A 3rd-century author, Titianus, is said to have rendered the fables into prose in
8624-598: The vestibule of the Queen's Staircase at Versailles. In 1843, the archaeologist Otto Jahn suggested that Aesop was the person depicted on a Greek red-figure cup, c. 450 BCE, in the Vatican Museums . Paul Zanker describes the figure as a man with "emaciated body and oversized head ... furrowed brow and open mouth", who "listens carefully to the teachings of the fox sitting before him. He has pulled his mantle tightly around his meager body, as if he were shivering ... he
8722-505: Was Ethiopian seems supported by the presence of camels, elephants and apes in the fables, even though these African elements are more likely to have come from Egypt and Libya than from Ethiopia, and the fables featuring African animals may have entered the body of Aesopic fables long after Aesop actually lived. Nevertheless, in 1932 the anthropologist J. H. Driberg, repeating the Aesop/Aethiop linkage, asserted that, while "some say he [Aesop]
8820-433: Was I. Baudoin's Fables d'Ésope Phrygien (1631) and Matthieu Guillemot's Les images ou tableaux de platte peinture des deux Philostrates (1637). In England, there was Francis Cleyn's frontispiece to John Ogilby 's The Fables of Aesop and the much later frontispiece to Godwin's Fables Ancient and Modern mentioned above in which the fabulist points out three of his characters to the children seated about him. Early on,
8918-683: Was a Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as Aesop's Fables . Although his existence remains unclear and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day. Many of the tales associated with him are characterized by anthropomorphic animal characters. Scattered details of Aesop's life can be found in ancient sources, including Aristotle , Herodotus , and Plutarch . An ancient literary work called The Aesop Romance tells an episodic, probably highly fictional version of his life, including
9016-468: Was a Phrygian ... the more general view ... is that he was an African", and "if Aesop was not an African, he ought to have been;" and in 2002 Richard A. Lobban Jr. cited the number of African animals and "artifacts" in the Aesopic fables as " circumstantial evidence " that Aesop was a Nubian folkteller. Popular perception of Aesop as black was to be encouraged by comparison between his fables and
9114-594: Was an ancient Greek poet , scholar , and librarian who was active in Alexandria during the 3rd century BC. A representative of Ancient Greek literature of the Hellenistic period , he wrote over 800 literary works, most of which do not survive, in a wide variety of genres. He espoused an aesthetic philosophy , known as Callimacheanism, which exerted a strong influence on the poets of the Roman Empire and, through them, on all subsequent Western literature . Born into
9212-521: Was cast as Aesop. In a plot containing "some of the most nonsensical screen doings of the year," he becomes entangled with the intended bride of King Croesus , a Persian princess played by Merle Oberon , and makes such a hash of it that he has to be rescued by the gods. The 1953 teleplay Aesop and Rhodope takes up another theme of his fictional history. Written by Helene Hanff , it was broadcast on Hallmark Hall of Fame with Lamont Johnson playing Aesop. The three-act A raposa e as uvas ("The Fox and
9310-503: Was frequently mentioned, according to Athenaeus 13.596. Pliny would later identify Rhodopis as Aesop's lover, a romantic motif that would be repeated in subsequent popular depictions of Aesop. Aesop plays a fairly prominent part in Plutarch 's conversation piece "The Banquet of the Seven Sages" in the 1st century CE. The fabulist then makes a cameo appearance in the novel A True Story by
9408-403: Was frequently performed there for the next twenty years. A translation and adaptation of Boursault's Les fables d'Esope , Vanbrugh's play depicted a physically ugly Aesop acting as adviser to Learchus, governor of Cyzicus under King Croesus, and using his fables to solve romantic problems and quiet political unrest. In 1780, the anonymously authored novelette The History and Amours of Rhodope
9506-573: Was published in London. The story casts the two slaves Rhodope and Aesop as unlikely lovers, one ugly and the other beautiful; ultimately Rhodope is parted from Aesop and marries the Pharaoh of Egypt. Some editions of the volume were illustrated with an engraving of a work by the painter Angelica Kauffman . The Beautiful Rhodope in Love with Aesop pictures Rhodope leaning on an urn; she holds out her hand to Aesop, who
9604-455: Was their aggressive, satirical tone. Although the poems are poorly preserved, their content is known from a set of ancient summaries ( diegeseis ). In the Iambs , Callimachus critically comments on issues of interest, revolving mostly around aesthetics and personal relationships. He uses the polemical tone of the genre to defend himself against critics of his poetic style and his tendency to write in
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