AESOP'S FABLES

A NEW TRANSLATION
BY

V. S. VERNON JONES

WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY

G. K. CHESTERTON

AND ILLUSTRATIONS
BY

ARTHUR RACKHAM



1912 EDITION

INTRODUCTION

Aesop embodies an epigram not uncommon in human history; hisfame is all the more deserved because he never deserved it. Thefirm foundations of common sense, the shrewd shots at uncommonsense, that characterise all the Fables, belong not him but tohumanity. In the earliest human history whatever is authentic isuniversal: and whatever is universal is anonymous. In such casesthere is always some central man who had first the trouble ofcollecting them, and afterwards the fame of creating them. He hadthe fame; and, on the whole, he earned the fame. There must havebeen something great and human, something of the human future andthe human past, in such a man: even if he only used it to rob thepast or deceive the future. The story of Arthur may have beenreally connected with the most fighting Christianity of fallingRome or with the most heathen traditions hidden in the hills ofWales. But the word "Mappe" or "Malory" will always mean KingArthur; even though we find older and better origins than theMabinogian; or write later and worse versions than the "Idylls ofthe King." The nursery fairy tales may have come out of Asia withthe Indo-European race, now fortunately extinct; they may have beeninvented by some fine French lady or gentleman like Perrault: theymay possibly even be what they profess to be. But we shall alwayscall the best selection of such tales "Grimm's Tales": simplybecause it is the best collection.

The historical Aesop, in so far as he was historical, would seemto have been a Phrygian slave, or at least one not to be speciallyand symbolically adorned with the Phrygian cap of liberty. Helived, if he did live, about the sixth century before Christ, inthe time of that Croesus whose story we love and suspect likeeverything else in Herodotus. There are also stories of deformityof feature and a ready ribaldry of tongue: stories which (as thecelebrated Cardinal said) explain, though they do not excuse, hishaving been hurled over a high precipice at Delphi. It is for thosewho read the Fables to judge whether he was really thrown over thecliff for being ugly and offensive, or rather for being highlymoral and correct. But there is no kind of doubt that the generallegend of him may justly rank him with a race too easily forgottenin our modern comparisons: the race of the great philosophicslaves. Aesop may have been a fiction like Uncle Remus: he wasalso, like Uncle Remus, a fact. It is a fact that slaves in the oldworld could be worshipped like Aesop, or loved like Uncle Remus. Itis odd to note that both the great slaves told their best storiesabout beasts and birds.

But whatever be fairly due to Aesop, the human tradition calledFables is not due to him. This had gone on long before anysarcastic freedman from Phrygia had or had not been flung off aprecipice; this has remained long after. It is to our advantage,indeed, to realise the distinction; because it makes Aesop moreobviously effective than any other fabulist. Grimm's Tales,glorious as they are, were collected by two German students. And ifwe find it hard to be certain of a German student, at least we knowmore about him than We