Aesop

Aesop (c. 620-c. 560 bc), ancient Greek writer of fables, who is supposed to have been a freed slave from Phrygia. His name became attached to the beast fables, long transmitted through oral tradition. The beast fables are part of the common culture of the Indo-European peoples and constitute perhaps the most widely read collection of fables in world literature. Many of Aesop's fables were rewritten in verse by the Greek poet Babrius, probably in the 1st or 2nd century ad, and in Latin verse by the Roman poet Phaedrus in the 1st century ad. The collection that now bears Aesop's name consists for the most part of later prose paraphrases of the fables of Babrius. His writing was to influence considerably later writers, such as the 17th-century poet Jean de La Fontaine.