AESOP'S FABLES

-----------ooOoo-----------

Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Of diverse origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to modern times through a number of sources and continue to be reinterpreted in different verbal registers and in popular as well as artistic media. The fables originally belonged to the oral tradition and were not collected for some three centuries after Aesop's death. By that time a variety of other stories, jokes and proverbs were being ascribed to him.

___________

The fable:

The man and his two wives

(A disgression:

“Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.”

― Oscar Wilde)

In a country where men could have more than one wife, a certain man, whose head was fast becoming white, had two, one a little older than himself, and one much younger. The young Wife, being of a gay and lively turn, did not want people to think that she had an old man for a husband, and so used to pull out as many of his white hairs as she could. The old Wife, on the other hand, did not wish to seem older than her husband, and so used to pull out the brown hairs. This went on, until between them both, they made the poor man quite bald.

___________

The moral:

Yield to all and you will soon have nothing to yield.

Alternative moral:

Truth is the victim of extreme opposing views.

___________

Comments:

At the start of the 18th century in Britain, the fable was given a political interpretation. It was applied to the situation of the reigning monarch, caught between the two political parties of the day.

----------ooOoo-----------