The Ancient Fable

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We are all familiar with the moralizing animal tales ascribed to Aesop. Described as fiction that conveys truths, fables can be found in some of the earliest Greek literature and have been an important component of European literature ever since. The fable as a literary form is a subject to which scholars of various modern literatures have recently turned their attention, but ancient Greek and Latin texts of this kind have fared less well. In The Ancient Fable: An Introduction, Niklas Holzberg provides the first one-volume study of the fable's history in antiquity, using the methods of modern literary criticism to describe its development. Holzberg considers--not only in terms of literary history, but also in individual analyses--fables used by many Greek and Roman authors in varying contexts as exempla; the verse fable books of Phaedrus, Babrius, and Avianus; and finally one Greek and one Latin prose fable book, both dating from the time of the Roman Empire and both attributed to Aesop.