12 The Literary Life of a Fictional Life: Aesop in Antiquity and Byzantium

What is it about?

The paper focuses on the imaginary biography of the famous fabulist Aesop, known as the Life of Aesop, and dating to the first century BC – second century AD. The paper explores the ancient tradition of the Greek text and its afterlife in Byzantium. After some introductory remarks on the content, the structure, the language/style, and the narrative technique of the Life, I discuss the interaction of this text with other contemporary literary texts and I argue that the first part (Xanthos’ part) represents one of the rare, if not the earliest such surviving, Greek literary sample of the comic-picaresque narrative. Moreover, in the course of my argument I identify direct and indirect references to, as well as quotations from, the Life by Byzantine authors, and I study the textual tradition of the Life (papyri and manuscripts) in Byzantium.

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