Proverbial Aesop

While most think Greek and Latin are dead languages, classical ideas and expressions live on in modern times. Aesop, the teller of animal stories, has been familiar for over two millenia. However, there was more to Aesop, who was also a teller of proverbs. These proverbs were recently collected from scattered sources and now translated into English for the first time.

Proverbs are an older sort of wisdom, older than Greek philosophy itself, having a rustic, plain-spoken, often earthy common sense style that amuses and instructs at the same time. These ancient zingy one-liners will frequently invoke a modern era one-liner that is surprisingly similar. When it comes to human common sense, there really is “nothing new under the sun.” By using the author's commentary for each proverb, this book lets readers understand how our distant ancestors understood these proverbs in their own times.

This commentary weaves nearly 200 proverbs into a rich tapestry of over 85 Aesop fables, around 30 Greek quotations and about 100 Latin quotations. What emerges is a triumph of the human spirit to evaluate plain-spoken common sense as the final and absolute “measure of all things.” This is a book you will never forget!