99 Fun Facts About Aesop's Fables

In the fable of the tortoise and the hare, what does the hare do that costs him the race?

Takes a nap, sure that his speed will save him. The old Greek moral blames the hare more than it praises the tortoise: natural talent, it says, is ruined by idleness.

In the Greek original of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, what does the wolf eat when no one comes?

The whole flock, as no one believes his real alarm; Aristotle is said to have remarked that this is all liars gain, and a later English verse version has the wolf eat the boy as well.

Which everyday expression comes from Aesop's fable of a fox who scorns the fruit he cannot reach?

Sour grapes: the fox decides that what he cannot have was never worth having. Swedish took over the fable with rowanberries instead, in the saying 'sour, said the fox'.

In the original Greek of The Ant and the Grasshopper, which insect begs the ants for food?

A cicada, tettix in the Greek and still 'la cigale' in the best-known French telling; English versions turned it into a grasshopper, and one Oxford translation makes it a cricket.

How does the mouse repay the lion that spared its life?

When Buddhist monks carried the story to China, the rescued animal became a tiger.

Why do the owners kill the goose that laid the golden eggs?

They expect a lump of gold inside it. Cut open, the bird proves no different from any other, so their greed costs them the golden egg it had been laying every day.

How does the thirsty crow reach the water low in the pitcher?

Drops in pebbles to raise the level. In a 2009 Cambridge study, rooks solved the same puzzle, dropping stones into a tube of water until a floating worm rose within reach.

In Aesop's fable of the wind and the sun, what must the winner make a passing traveller do?

Remove his cloak. The North Wind's hardest blasts only make the traveller wrap it tighter, while the Sun's steady warmth soon has him taking it off by himself.

In The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, why does the country mouse hurry home?

It prefers safety to rich food. After a scare sends both mice running from the banquet, the country mouse leaves for good, saying plain fare eaten in peace beats luxury eaten in fear.

Which Roman poet worked The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse into one of his Satires?

Horace used the tale to close a satire on why he preferred his quiet country farm to Rome. In his telling, barking mastiffs break up the city feast.

In Belling the Cat, the mice's plan collapses because of what?

Nobody will volunteer to attach the bell. The plan is cheered until an old mouse asks who will carry it out, which is why 'to bell the cat' came to mean taking on the dangerous part of a shared scheme.

Which phrase comes from a fable where one hunter claims the whole kill after a joint hunt?

The lion's share. In the fable the lion carves up the kill and then keeps every portion, his partners too afraid to object, though the phrase now means only the biggest part.

In The Bundle of Sticks, which lesson does a father teach his sons?

Unity gives strength. None of the sons can snap the tied bundle, yet each stick breaks easily alone, so the father warns that quarrelling will leave them just as easy for enemies to break.

How does the fox get the cheese away from the crow?

Flatters her into singing. The moment the crow opens her beak to prove her voice the cheese drops, and the fox trots off remarking that she has a voice but no wits.

The Crow and the Fox is the second poem in whose 17th-century French verse Fables?

Jean de La Fontaine. In his version the fox walks off with the cheese, telling the bird that the lesson it has just learned is surely worth the price.

In Aesop's fable, a dog carrying meat drops it after seeing what?

Its own reflection in the water. Taking it for another dog with a bigger prize, the dog snaps at the image and loses the real one to the stream.

In the fable behind the phrase 'dog in the manger', what does the dog do out of spite?

Guards fodder it cannot eat. The dog snarls at the hungry animals that could eat it, so the phrase came to describe anyone who keeps from others what they cannot use themselves.

Which proverb sums up The Milkmaid and Her Pail?

Don't count your chickens before they hatch. Daydreaming about the eggs, chicks and new dress her milk will buy, the milkmaid tosses her head and the whole pail goes over.

The wolf in sheep's clothing, often credited to Aesop, also appears as a warning in which part of the Bible?

The Sermon on the Mount. Jesus warns there of false prophets who come in sheep's clothing but are inwardly ravening wolves, and says they will be known by their fruits.

In The Frogs Who Desired a King, what does Zeus first send the frogs as their ruler?

A log. Its splash terrifies the frogs, but they are soon sitting on their motionless king and mocking it, so they demand a livelier ruler and are sent one that eats them.

What does Androcles remove from the lion's paw in the old tale?

A thorn. Years later Androcles is thrown to the beasts in Rome, where the lion sent to kill him turns out to be the same one and greets him like an old friend.

Which playwright's 1912 comedy turned Androcles into a Christian tailor?

George Bernard Shaw. In his Androcles and the Lion the timid tailor and the lion sent to eat him recognise each other, embrace and waltz around the arena to deafening applause.

In The Oak and the Reed, why does the reed survive the storm?

It bends with the wind. The oak trusts its strength, stands stiff against the gale and is torn up by the roots, while the reed bows low and springs back unharmed.

In The Bear and the Travellers, how does the traveller left behind survive?

He pretends to be dead. When his friend climbs down from a tree and asks what the bear whispered, he says it warned him against companions who desert you in danger.

How does the wolf repay the crane that saves it from choking?

Letting it take its head out unharmed. The crane reaches down the wolf's throat for a stuck bone and asks for the promised payment, only to hear that escaping a wolf's jaws alive is reward enough.

How does the stork repay the fox's soup in a shallow bowl?

Serves a meal in a narrow-necked vessel. The stork's long bill reaches the food with ease, while the fox, who had lapped up the soup alone, can only lick the outside of the jar.

In The Two Pots, a clay pot and a pot made of what are swept along a river together?

Metal. The clay pot begs its bronze companion to keep clear, because whichever of them knocks into the other, the clay pot is the one that will break.

In The Ass in the Lion's Skin, what gives the disguised donkey away to the fox?

Its bray. Thrilled at scaring the other animals, the donkey cannot resist a loud hee-haw, and the fox says it too might have been fooled had the ass kept its mouth shut.

Herodotus says the storyteller Aesop lived on the island of Samos as what?

A slave. Herodotus names his master as a Samian called Iadmon, and a later Greek writer has him defending a local politician in public, which suggests he had been freed by then.

According to Plutarch, how did Aesop die?

Thrown from a cliff at Delphi. Sent there as an envoy, he fell out with the townspeople, who accused him of sacrilege and hurled him from the rocks.

Which Lydian king supposedly sent Aesop on the diplomatic mission that ended in his death?

Croesus. In the story the wealthy king sent Aesop abroad with money to share among a city's people, but after a quarrel he refused to hand it out, and it cost him his life.

The highly fictional Aesop Romance says the fabulist was at first unable to do what?

Speak. In the tale he helps a lost priestess, or in another version some hungry priests, and as a reward is granted the use of his tongue.

How is the Honest Woodcutter rewarded for refusing a god's offer of gold and silver axes?

He keeps all three. When others hear of it and lie that a golden axe is theirs, the god gives them nothing and they lose their own axes as well.

Which Spanish painter's portrait of Aesop, painted around 1640, hangs in the Prado paired with a portrait of Menippus?

Diego Velázquez. He showed the storyteller as a poorly dressed man holding a book, one of a pair thought to have been painted for King Philip IV's hunting lodge near Madrid.

Which Greek philosopher spent his final days putting Aesop's fables into verse?

Socrates. In Plato's Phaedo he explains that a recurring dream kept telling him to make music, so in prison awaiting death he tried verse for the first time.

Which saying sums up the fable of Hercules and the Waggoner?

God helps those who help themselves. When the driver only prays to Hercules over his stuck cart, he is told to put his own shoulder to the wheel first.

In Aesop's fable, why does the fox refuse to enter the sick lion's cave?

Tracks lead in but none out. The old lion was only pretending to be ill so that kind visitors would walk into his den, and the fox reads the footprints before following them.

In the usual English telling of The Miller, His Son and the Donkey, what do the pair finally try?

Carrying it themselves. Mocked for walking beside the donkey, for each riding it alone and for riding it together, they sling it from a pole, and in trying to please everyone they end up losing it.

In The Farmer and the Viper, how does the frozen snake repay the man who warms it?

It bites him. With his dying breath the farmer blames himself for taking pity on a scoundrel, the same warning carried by the old phrase about nursing a viper in your bosom.

Who published the first printed English version of Aesop's Fables in 1484?

William Caxton. England's first printer made the translation himself and printed it at Westminster, where he had set up his press in 1476.

Which 12th-century woman poet adapted the fables into verse couplets under the title Ysopet?

Marie de France. She said she was working from an English version of the fables made by King Alfred, and she wrote her own in French verse for a Count William.

In The Wolf and the Lamb, what does the wolf do once the lamb has answered every accusation?

Eats the lamb anyway. Every charge is disproved, including an insult from before the lamb was born, but the wolf will not be talked out of a meal: a tyrant can always find an excuse.

Which philosopher's Some Thoughts Concerning Education recommended Aesop's fables as a child's first reading book?

John Locke. He thought the stories would delight a child yet still give a grown man something to reflect on, and urged an edition with pictures to draw young readers in.

Which French palace's gardens once held a hedge maze with thirty-nine fountains of Aesop's fables?

Versailles. The painted lead animals spouted jets of water to stand for speech, each group beside a plaque of verse, until the maze was destroyed when the gardens were replanted a century later.

In Aesop's fable, what does a fox that lost its tail urge the other foxes to do?

Cut off their tails too. The fox argues that a tail is only a useless burden, until another points out that it would never have said so before losing its own.

Jerry Pinkney's nearly wordless picture book The Lion & the Mouse won which American prize in 2010?

The Caldecott Medal. It goes to the illustrator of the year's most distinguished American picture book, and Pinkney, five times a runner-up, finally won by telling the fable almost entirely in pictures.

Zeno of Elea's famous head-start race paradox pairs the tortoise with which hero?

Achilles. Zeno argued that the swift hero could never overtake the tortoise, because by the time he reaches the spot where it was, it has always crept a little further ahead.

Several of Aesop's fables have parallels in the Jataka tales and the Panchatantra, story collections from which land?

India. Nobody can say which tradition is older, so scholars debate which way the borrowing ran, and Greek and Indian storytellers may each have taken tales from the other.

In Aesop's fable, a donkey that melts its salt load in a river is next loaded with what?

Sponges. The donkey lies down in the ford expecting this load to melt away like the salt, but the sponges soak up water and it struggles home under a far heavier burden.

Which phrase for changing your mind is linked to Aesop's fable of the satyr and the traveller?

To blow hot and cold. The satyr throws out his guest after watching him blow on his fingers to warm them and then on his supper to cool it.

In The Miser and His Gold, what is the miser told to bury in place of his stolen treasure?

A stone. Since he only ever looked at the gold and never spent a coin of it, a passer-by tells him a rock in the hole will serve him just as well.

In The Crab and Its Mother, what does the mother fail to do when her son asks to be shown how?

Walk straight. She scolds her son for scuttling sideways, but when he asks for a demonstration she can only do the same, the fable's case for teaching by example.

In The Dog and the Wolf, why does the hungry wolf refuse the dog's easy life?

The dog is kept on a chain. Tempted by regular meals, the wolf notices the fur worn from the dog's neck, learns a collar did it, and decides to stay hungry and free.

In the usual English telling of The Vain Jackdaw, whose cast-off feathers does he wear?

Peacocks'. They see through the disguise and peck the borrowed plumes off him, and when he slinks home his fellow jackdaws drive him away as well.

In Aesop's fable, a stag admires his antlers in a pool; what do they do when he is chased?

Tangle in the branches. The thin legs he was ashamed of were carrying him clear, and it was the antlers he was so proud of that held him fast until he was caught.

In The Farmer and His Sons, what do the sons gain by digging up the land for buried treasure?

A bumper harvest. Their dying father had told them a treasure lay hidden in the ground, and all their digging turned the soil so well that the crop itself made them rich.

How does the ant repay its rescuer in The Ant and the Dove?

Attacks the man stalking her. The dove had thrown the drowning ant something to float ashore on, and the ant's attack on the hunter's foot spoils his attempt just in time.

In The Fox and the Goat, how does the fox get out of the well?

Climbs up the goat's horns. Having coaxed the thirsty goat down with praise for the water, the fox springs out over him and leaves him stranded at the bottom.

The cartoon shorts Aesop and Son ran as a regular segment of which TV programme?

Rocky and Bullwinkle. In each short Aesop tries to teach his son a lesson with a fable and the boy undercuts the moral with a pun, in the spirit of the show's Fractured Fairy Tales.

In a fable often wrongly credited to Aesop, which creature fatally stings the frog carrying it across a river?

A scorpion dooms them both midstream, explaining that stinging is simply its nature. The tale is first known from a Russian novel of 1933, far too late for Aesop.

In Aesop's fable The Frog and the Ox, what happens when the frog puffs herself up to match the ox?

She bursts, a warning against envying the great. A proverb in Kirundi and Amharic tells the same story with an elephant in place of the ox.

In the fable The Boy and the Filberts, why can the boy not pull his hand out of the pitcher?

His fist is too full of nuts to pass back through the narrow neck. A bystander tells the weeping boy to settle for half, and his hand will slide out easily.

Which term for a dupe comes from a fable where a monkey has a companion pull chestnuts from a fire?

Cat's-paw recalls the pet that scorches itself fishing out the nuts while the monkey eats every one. Dictionaries still define the word as someone used by another as a tool.

Which familiar phrase does the fly use to taunt the man who slaps his own bald head in an old fable?

Adding insult to injury is the fly's jibe after the man misses it and hits himself. The Roman poet Phaedrus told the fable in Latin verse, and it is often cited as an early home of the phrase.

In Aesop's fable of a war between the birds and the beasts, which creature keeps switching to the winning side?

The bat is cast out by both armies once peace is made. The fable gives that as the reason it hides in dark places by day and flies alone at night.

In the fable The Fox and the Cat, what single trick saves the cat when a pack of hounds arrives?

Climbing a tree is the only trick the cat knows, and it works. The fox, who boasted of a whole bagful, is still choosing among them when the hounds catch him.

In The Lion in Love, what must the lion give up before he may marry the woodcutter's daughter?

His claws and teeth go at the father's request, and the now harmless suitor is promptly set upon with a club. The fable gave English the idiom of drawing someone's teeth.

Which proverb is tied to Aesop's fable of a gambler who sells his only coat on seeing a migrant bird return?

One swallow doesn't make a summer, as the gambler learns when the frost comes back and he finds the bird frozen. Aristotle quotes a version of the saying in his Nicomachean Ethics.

In Aesop's fable, two maids kill the rooster whose crowing ends their sleep at dawn; what does their mistress do?

Wakes them even earlier is the result, because with no cockcrow to tell the hour the widow now rouses her maids in the middle of the night.

In Aesop's The Old Man and Death, what does the weary woodcutter ask for when Death answers his call?

Help lifting his load is all he wants once Death is actually standing there. The firewood he threw down in despair goes right back on his shoulders.

In Aesop's The Cock and the Jewel, what does the rooster say he would rather have than the gem he finds?

A grain of barley beats every jewel in the world, he declares. Medieval readers called him a fool blind to wisdom, while others think he simply knows what is useful to him.

Which proverb is often attached to The Fox and the Lion, where a scared fox turns chatty by the third meeting?

Familiarity breeds contempt is the moral in Joseph Jacobs's classic retelling, where the fox ends by asking after the lion's family and strolling off without ceremony.

Which Shakespeare tragedy opens with a patrician calming rioters by telling the fable of The Belly and the Members?

Coriolanus begins with Menenius Agrippa likening the Senate to a stomach that looks idle yet feeds every limb. Shakespeare took the speech from Plutarch.

In Aesop's fable of an eagle shot by an archer, what does the dying bird notice about the arrow?

It bears his own feathers, so he has helped arm his killer. Aeschylus used the image in a lost tragedy, The Myrmidons, the earliest known mention of the fable.

In Aesop's fable Zeus and the Tortoise, why is the tortoise sentenced to carry her house forever?

She skipped his wedding and said she preferred her own home, so the god made sure she would never be without it. The fable is one source of the saying that there's no place like home.

In Aesop's The Honest Woodcutter, which Greek god dives into the river to fetch the lost axe?

Hermes takes pity on the weeping man and plunges in himself, although rivers were hardly the messenger god's usual business. Roman retellings call him Mercury.

In Aesop's The Thief and His Mother, what does the condemned son do when she leans in for a last word?

Bites off her ear, then tells her she earned it by praising him when he stole a schoolmate's book as a boy. A beating then, he says, would have saved him from execution.

In Aesop's The Bee and Jupiter, what price does the god attach to the sting the bee asks for?

She dies if she uses it, because the sting stays behind in the wound. Jupiter, fond of mankind, was angry that she wanted a weapon to kill anyone who came for her honey.

In Aesop's The Fisherman and the Little Fish, what does the tiny catch beg the angler to do?

Throw it back to grow, pleads the fish, promising a far better meal later on. The fisherman keeps it, preferring a small certain gain to a bigger doubtful one.

Which novella, first published with the subtitle A Fairy Story, is a beast fable about pigs leading a revolt?

Animal Farm borrows the fabulist's oldest device, animals standing in for people, to satirise the Russian Revolution and Stalin's rule. Orwell wrote it in the winter of 1943 to 1944.

In which country did Aesop's Fables, brought by Portuguese missionaries, stay in print after Westerners were expelled?

Japan kept the fables in circulation as Isopo Monogatari, first translated in the 1590s, because by then Aesop was being presented as though he were a local sage.

A medieval Byzantine scholar guessed from Aesop's name that the storyteller came from which African land?

Ethiopia was the guess of Planudes in the 13th century, who tied the name Aesop to the word Aethiop. Scholars now reject the etymology, but it started a long tradition of a black African Aesop.

A 19th-century Russian satirist coined the term 'Aesopian language' for writing designed to get past whom?

Censors were the target: Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin veiled his satire of Tsarist society in hints and allegory, much as a fable hides its point behind animals. Soviet-era writers revived the method.

Which trickster fox is the hero of a medieval cycle of beast fables, forever tormenting his uncle, a wolf?

Reynard was so popular that his name, as renard, became the standard French word for a fox and pushed out the older word goupil.

Which New Yorker humorist wrote and illustrated Fables for Our Time, giving old animal tales modern twists?

James Thurber gathered 28 of the pieces into a 1940 book after they had run in the magazine, updating some old fables and inventing new ones of his own.

Which of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is a beast fable about the proud rooster Chauntecleer and a sly fox?

The Nun's Priest's Tale has the fox coax the rooster into crowing with his eyes shut and neck stretched out, then snatch him from the yard. Chaucer composed it in the 1390s as a mock epic.

Which cartoonist launched the Aesop's Fables film series in 1921 and later ran the studio behind Mighty Mouse?

Paul Terry took the idea from a young writer and later claimed he had never even heard of Aesop. One of the shorts, Dinner Time, reached cinemas with a soundtrack before Disney's Steamboat Willie.

Which fabulist, honoured with a statue in St Petersburg's Summer Garden, wrote The Swan, the Pike and the Crawfish?

Ivan Krylov is Russia's best-known fabulist, and in that tale three creatures haul one cart in three directions, so it never moves. Reliefs of his fables surround the seated statue.

The Arabic fable collection Kalila wa Dimna takes its title from two scheming animals of which kind?

Jackals named Kalila and Dimna both tell the stories and act in them, at the court of a lion who plays the king. The Arabic version was made around 750 by the Persian writer Ibn al-Muqaffa.

In Aesop's The Ass and the Lapdog, how does the envious donkey try to win his owner's affection?

Leaps onto his master, having already smashed the table and dishes while frisking about like the little dog. The servants drive him back to the stable with clubs.

In Aesop's The Farmer and the Stork, why does the farmer refuse to free the stork trapped in his net?

It was caught with thieves, the cranes raiding his newly sown field, and the farmer says it must die in their company. Its plea of excellent character and a broken leg only makes him laugh.

In Aesop's The Swollen Fox, a fox gorges inside a hollow oak; what must he do before he can get out?

Wait until he is thin again is the only advice a passing fox can give. The bread and meat had been left in the tree by shepherds, and the hole that admitted a hungry fox will not release a full one.

In Aesop's The Buffoon and the Countryman, what does the countryman hide in his clothes to out-act a famous mimic?

A live piglet, whose ear he pinches to make it squeal. The crowd still insists the comedian's imitation was truer to life, until the rustic pulls the animal out to show what sort of judges they are.

In Aesop's The Mice and the Weasels, why are the mouse generals unable to escape into their holes?

Their headgear will not fit, because the generals had tied showy ornaments on their heads so the troops could pick them out. The rank and file slip home while every leader is caught and eaten.

In Aesop's The Monkey and the Dolphin, the monkey is caught lying when he claims which place near Athens as a friend?

Piraeus is a port, not a person, so the dolphin knows its shipwrecked passenger is no Athenian nobleman and ducks him under the waves to drown.

Which artist's Aesop's Fables illustrations won him a post at Punch, years before he drew Wonderland's Alice?

John Tenniel was invited to join the magazine at Christmas 1850 because of those drawings, and stayed for half a century as its leading political cartoonist.

The Panchatantra frames its animal fables as lessons a wise teacher gives to which unpromising pupils?

Three ignorant princes, sons of King Amarasakti, are taught the principles of good government through stories. The text is credited to a sage called Vishnu Sharma, possibly a pen name.

In Aesop's The Tortoise and the Eagle, what happens once the eagle agrees to teach the tortoise to fly?

He lets her fall from near the clouds, and her shell is dashed to pieces on a mountain. She had promised him all the riches of the Red Sea for the lesson.

In Aesop's The Old Woman and the Physician, what does the doctor do on every visit while treating her eyes?

Steals her belongings, piece by piece, until the house is bare. In court she argues that she cannot be cured, since she can no longer see a single thing in her own home.