UI Press | Ben Edwin Perry | Aesopica: A Series of Texts Relating to Aesop or Ascribed to Him

Aesopica

A Series of Texts Relating to Aesop or Ascribed to Him

The most complete corpus of the proverbs and fables of Aesop ever assembled

Ben Edwin Perry's Aesopica remains the definitive edition of all fables reputed to be by Aesop. The volume begins traditionally with a life of Aesop, but in two different and previously unedited Greek versions, with collations that record variations in the major recensions. It includes 179 proverbs attributed to Aesop and 725 carefully organized fables, for which Perry also provides their eldest known sources. To better evaluate the place of Aesop in literary history, Perry includes testimonies about Aesop made by Greek and Latin authors, from Herodotus to Maximus Planudes.

"Nothing approaching this in magnitude has existed before and it is safe to say that all future study of the Aesopic tradition will rest on this vast collection and careful sifting of the basic texts."--American Journal of Philology

"'Monumental' is the only appropriate word to describe this work."--Journal of Oriental Languages

Ben Edwin Perry (1892-1968) was a professor of classics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1924 until his retirement in 1960 and author of Studies in the Text History of the Life and Fables of Aesop, The Aesopic Fable in the Orient, and many other books.

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