Fables and Fabulists: Ancient and Modern

Yet what happened was shown to be to a large extent in the hands of what the Greeks called ‘fate’ or ‘the gods’. It was the Greeks’ poetic way of saying that things often work out randomly, according to dynamics that simply don’t reflect the merits of the individuals concerned. The great Greek tragedians – Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles – recou

Livy was one of those Roman sceptics who tried to rationalise this particularly implausible aspect of the tale. The Latin word for ‘wolf’ (lupa) was also used as a colloquial term for ‘prostitute’ (lupanare was one standard term for ‘brothel’). Could it be that a local whore rather than a local wild beast had found and tended the twins?

Sadly, of the Hazar Afsaneh itself not a single copy survives. This book is the great “missing link” of world literature, the fabled volume through which the wonder tales of India traveled west to encounter, eventually, the Arabic language and to turn into The Thousand Nights and One Night,

“Austerity,” which says something about people, has also been degraded and has acquired a bitter taste, while for Aristotle or Aquinas it marked the foundation of friendship. In the Summa Theologica, II, II, in the 186th question, article 5, Thomas deals with disciplined and creative playfulness. In his third response he defines “austerity” as a vi