What are Aesop's Fables and Why Read Them?

Not Just a Kid's Book

I was recently in a storage room in my parents basement where a lot of my childhood items were stored and I stumbled across a book that my mother read to me as a child.  It is called The Aesop for Children.  I had totally forgot about it until then but also was extremely happy because now I get to read it again.  It is possibly the most important book you should read at least once and I will read it again.  Yes, a children's book is that important.

This is one of the rare books published for children but absolutely should be read by adults.  The lessons learned in the book will be useful to anyone of any age and are always true in life.

What its About and Who was Aesop?

For people that are not familiar with Aesop's fables you might know the most famous one, The Shepard Boy and the Wolf, which these days is called The Boy Who Cried Wolf.  The majority of the fables involve animals of some kind.  The Grasshopper and the Ant, The Scorpion and the Frog, the list goes on.  They are short easy to read stories that have very important lessons in them told by using animals as the examples.  At the end of the story it's wrapped up in a moral.  That's where the term "The moral of the story..." comes from.  Each story has a couple pictures, at least in my book, to drive the point home.  

Aesop was a slave in ancient Greece who was also a storyteller.  He lived somewhere between 620 and 560 BC.  His original stories survive to this day but have also been added to throughout the centuries.  Many of the great Greek philosophers studied Aesop's fables including Plato, Socrates and Herodotus. It's most likely that Aesop didn't invent the fables himself but he certainly collected many of them and spread them through the Greek world with his storytelling ability. He made them famous which is why his name is connected to them.

If there was one book that I would urge every man or any adult to read, it would be this one.  The morals taught in the stories are so fantastic that they are referenced in movies, by politicians and other pop culture.  Knowing the morals and understanding them will give you an edge that you never knew you had.  The morals are true and timeless.  Do yourself a favour and go to the library and take a couple hours and read them all or read one a night like my mother did to me.  I'll even give you one right now just so you can understand how they work.

The Serpent and the Eagle

An Eagle swooped down upon a Serpent and seized it in his talons with the intention of carrying it off and devouring it. But the Serpent was too quick for him and had its coils round him in a moment; and then there ensued a life-and-death struggle between the two. A countryman, who was a witness of the encounter, came to the assistance of the eagle, and succeeded in freeing him from the Serpent and enabling him to escape. In revenge, the Serpent spat some of his poison into the man's drinking-horn. Heated with his exertions, the man was about to slake his thirst with a draught from the horn, when the Eagle knocked it out of his hand, and spilled its contents upon the ground.

The moral of the story: "One good turn deserves another."

For people that don't care for books, there is an excellent online resource for Aesop's fables:
Aesop's Fables


Final Words

For any man out there that decides to read the book I congratulate you because you will learn lessons that will help you in your life.  Get over the stigma that this might be for children.  If you haven't read this as a child then you should read it now.  The stories presented have been relevant since ancient Greece and they still are to this day.