A fable is one of the oldest forms of thinking and one of the oldest genres of the art of words. The fable tradition, which has a centuries-old history, dates back to the legendary Greek sage Aesop. His name is first mentioned in Herodotus's "Histories" (5th century BC), from which we learn that Aesop lived in the 6th century BC on Samos and was a slave. Later information about him is quite varied and contradictory. Initially, fables belonged to the oral tradition and were recorded much later after Aesop's death; they have reached us through a number of sources—Greek and Latin, with many plots subsequently attributed to Aesop. This collection includes a complete compilation (about 500) of "Aesop's fables" translated and commented on by the outstanding classical philologist M. L. Gasparov. The very number of texts connected by tradition with Aesop's name speaks of the extraordinary popularity of these simple stories that encapsulate life experience. It is no coincidence that Aesop's fables have been eagerly used by many poets in their work, including La Fontaine, Lessing, Krylov, who created the best examples of modern European literary fable.
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