These terms of praise, it must be confessed, cannot be bestowed on all… — Aesop's Fables
SAPIR 861
These terms of praise, it must be confessed, cannot be bestowed on all the fables in this collection. Many of them lack that unity of design, that close connection of the moral with the narrative, that wise choice in the introduction of the animals, which constitute the charm and excellency of true Aesopian fable. This inferiority of some to others is sufficiently accounted for in the history of the origin and descent of these fables. The great bulk of them are not the immediate work of Aesop. Many are obtained from ancient authors prior to the time in which he lived. Thus, the fable of the "Hawk and the Nightingale" is related by Hesiod;[4] the "Eagle wounded by an Arrow, winged with its own Feathers," by Aeschylus;[5] the "Fox avenging his wrongs on the Eagle," by Archilochus.[6] Many of them again are of later origin, and are to be traced to the monks of the middle ages: and yet this
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (WLC), CC BY 4.0