Aesop's Fables... in Latin!
Ning Diary: Jan. 7 - Aesop in the law courts of Australia
One of the benefits of being "Aesop Central" online is that I get all kinds of interesting inquiries from people who have questions about the fables or who have some fable material to share. This week, I received a wonderful email from Leslie Katz, a retired judge in Australia, who has written a paper on the use of Aesop's fables in judgments issued in Australian courts - and this is just one article in a series of articles he is preparing on literary allusions in Australian reasons for judgment. Even better: he is publishing the articles online through the Social Science Research Network, so you can read the paper there for yourself.
Aesop in Australian Reasons for Judgment, by Leslie Katz
(You can also find his other papers there, on allusions to Homer, to the Psalms, and to Dickens' Bleak House!)
One of the things that most struck me about the paper was that two of the fables cited - The Dog in the Manger, and The Fox and The Cat (or Squirrel) - are fables that are often omitted from "standard" collections of fables nowadays, because these two particular fables are not attested in ancient Greek and Roman sources, but only in medieval sources and later. Yet as the evidence gathered by Mr. Katz demonstrates, these two fables have indeed been regarded as full-fledged members of the corpus of Aesop's fables, fit for citation by judges in their judgments!
It seems to me a big mistake to limit Aesop's fables only to the ancient fables that happen to have survived. Our ancient sources for the fables in Latin are rather scanty, and almost entirely in verse (just the opposite of the Greek corpus, which survives mostly in prose versions). Yet in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the Latin fable tradition was thriving, with hundreds of prose fables that were widely known, as they were told and retold by many storytellers all over Europe.
It's only with the classical "housecleaning" of the fables that such worthy veterans have discarded, alas. Luckily for us, though, Francis Barlow was not under the sway of such classical prejudices when he assembled his collection of Aesop's fables in the 17th century. As a result, you can find all kinds of Latin fables in this book - such as The Dog in the Manger, or The Tortoise and the Hare, or The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs - that are very famous fables indeed, but which you will not find in an ancient Roman source. :-)
Aesop in Australian Reasons for Judgment, by Leslie Katz
(You can also find his other papers there, on allusions to Homer, to the Psalms, and to Dickens' Bleak House!)
One of the things that most struck me about the paper was that two of the fables cited - The Dog in the Manger, and The Fox and The Cat (or Squirrel) - are fables that are often omitted from "standard" collections of fables nowadays, because these two particular fables are not attested in ancient Greek and Roman sources, but only in medieval sources and later. Yet as the evidence gathered by Mr. Katz demonstrates, these two fables have indeed been regarded as full-fledged members of the corpus of Aesop's fables, fit for citation by judges in their judgments!
It seems to me a big mistake to limit Aesop's fables only to the ancient fables that happen to have survived. Our ancient sources for the fables in Latin are rather scanty, and almost entirely in verse (just the opposite of the Greek corpus, which survives mostly in prose versions). Yet in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the Latin fable tradition was thriving, with hundreds of prose fables that were widely known, as they were told and retold by many storytellers all over Europe.
It's only with the classical "housecleaning" of the fables that such worthy veterans have discarded, alas. Luckily for us, though, Francis Barlow was not under the sway of such classical prejudices when he assembled his collection of Aesop's fables in the 17th century. As a result, you can find all kinds of Latin fables in this book - such as The Dog in the Manger, or The Tortoise and the Hare, or The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs - that are very famous fables indeed, but which you will not find in an ancient Roman source. :-)
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