Audiobook · read by volunteers
Aesop's Fables, Volume 10 (Fables 226-250)
Aesop (620–564 BC)
Read by Maria Celano, Nikolle Doolin, Aaron Hochwimmer, Corey LeMoine, JemmaBlythe, Juan Carlos Bagnell, Thomas Bernthal, Mariann Margitics · 25 chapters · 32 min
About the book
This volume of Aesop's Fables gathers twenty-five short tales numbered 226 to 250. The Weasel and the Man, The Ploughman, the Ass and the Ox, and Demades and His Fable are among the pieces here, and each one makes its point in a minute or less. As always, animals and sometimes ordinary people stand in for our own habits, so we meet the clever and the foolish, the greedy and the generous, the boaster and the careful. The morals are stated simply and invite conversation. Eight LibriVox volunteers share the work, among them Maria Celano and Nikolle Doolin, which gives the collection a pleasing variety of voices. The whole volume lasts only about half an hour, which makes it ideal for a break, a short drive or a bedtime story before sleep, and a good way to explore the later part of a great tradition.
Introduction
Aesop is the traditional name of the storyteller behind a huge collection of fables, said to date from the sixth century BC. The years 620 to 564 BC are often cited. Very little is certain about his life, and some scholars wonder whether he existed at all, yet the stories attached to his name have been told in almost every culture.
This is volume ten of a LibriVox series that works through the fables in numbered batches of twenty-five or so, in an English edition dated 1912. Volume ten covers numbers 226 to 250. By this stage of the series the listener has met the most famous animals; here we find lesser-known tales, including some in which people rather than beasts are the actors, such as Demades and His Fable, which shows how a clever speaker can use a story to win attention.
The recording has 25 short chapters and lasts about half an hour. Eight volunteers read, so the collection is a patchwork of voices and styles.
Why listen today? The fables are among the oldest forms of storytelling that survive, and they remain a quick, pleasurable way to think about human behaviour. You can hear them one at a time, or run through the whole set in the time it takes to make a cup of tea. Because the volume is so short, it can be combined with others in the series or enjoyed by itself. Comparing two or three fables back to back often reveals how the same moral can be reached from quite different starting points, which is part of what has kept these stories in circulation for so long.
Public domain
Aesop died in 564 BC: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text