Aesop - Physical Appearance and The Question of African Origin

Physical Appearance and The Question of African Origin

The anonymously authored Aesop Romance (usually dated to the 1st or 2nd century AD) begins with a vivid description of Aesop's appearance, saying he was "of loathsome aspect... potbellied, misshapen of head, snub-nosed, swarthy, dwarfish, bandy-legged, short-armed, squint-eyed, liver-lipped—a portentous monstrosity," or as another translation has it, "a faulty creation of Prometheus when half-asleep." The earliest text by a known author that refers to Aesop's appearance is Himerius in the 4th century, who says that Aesop "was laughed at and made fun of, not because of some of his tales but on account of his looks and the sound of his voice." The evidence from both of these sources is dubious, since Himerius lived some 800 years after Aesop and his image of Aesop may have come from The Aesop Romance, which is essentially fiction; but whether based on fact or not, at some point the idea of an ugly, even deformed Aesop took hold in popular imagination. Scholars have begun to examine why and how this "physiognomic tradition" developed.

A much later tradition depicts Aesop as a black African from Ethiopia. The presence of such slaves in Greek-speaking areas is suggested by the fable "Washing the Ethiopian white" that is ascribed to Aesop himself. This concerns a man who buys a black slave and, assuming that he was neglected by his former master, tries very hard to wash the blackness away. But nowhere in the fable is it suggested that this constitutes a personal reference. The first known promulgator of the idea was Planudes, a Byzantine scholar of the 13th century who wrote a biography of Aesop based on The Aesop Romance and conjectured that Aesop might have been Ethiopian, given his name. An English translation of Planudes' biography from 1687 says that "his Complexion black, from which dark Tincture he contracted his Name (Aesopus being the same with Aethiops)". When asked his origin by a prospective new master, Aesop replies, "I am a Negro"; numerous illustrations by Francis Barlow accompany this text and depict Aesop accordingly. But according to Gert-Jan van Dijk, "Planudes' derivation of 'Aesop' from 'Aethiopian' is... etymologically incorrect," and Frank Snowden says that Planudes' account is "worthless as to the reliability of Aesop as 'Ethiopian.'"

The tradition of Aesop's African origin was carried forward into the 19th century. The frontispiece of William Godwin's Fables Ancient and Modern (1805) has a copperplate illustration of Aesop relating his stories to little children that gives his features a distinctly African appearance. The collection includes the fable of "Washing the Blackamoor white", although updating it and making the Ethiopian 'a black footman'. In 1856 William Martin Leake repeated the false etymological linkage of "Aesop" with "Aethiop" when he suggested that the "head of a negro" found on several coins from ancient Delphi (with specimens dated as early as 520 BC) might depict Aesop, presumably to commemorate (and atone for) his execution at Delphi, but Theodor Panofka supposed the head to be a portrait of Delphos, founder of Delphi, a view more widely repeated by later historians.

The idea that Aesop was Ethiopian has been further encouraged by the presence of camels, elephants, and apes in the fables, even though these African elements are more likely to have come from Egypt and Libya than from Ethiopia, and the fables featuring African animals may have entered the body of Aesopic fables long after Aesop actually lived. Nevertheless, in 1932 the anthropologist J.H. Driberg, repeating the Aesop/Aethiop linkage, asserted that, while "some say he was a Phrygian... the more general view... is that he was an African", and "if Aesop was not an African, he ought to have been;" and in 2002 Richard A. Lobban cited the number of African animals and "artifacts" in the Aesopic fables as "circumstantial evidence" that Aesop may have been a Nubian folkteller.

Popular perception of Aesop as black may have been further encouraged by a perceived similarity between fables of the trickster Br'er Rabbit, told by African-American slaves, and the traditional role of the slave Aesop as "a kind of culture hero of the oppressed, and the Life as a how-to handbook for the successful manipulation of superiors." This is reinforced by the 1971 TV production Aesop's Fables in which Bill Cosby played Aesop. In this mixture of live action and animation, two black children wander into an enchanted grove, where Aesop tells them fables that differentiate between realistic and unrealistic ambition. His version there of the Tortoise and the Hare illustrates how to take advantage of an opponent's over-confidence.

On other continents Aesop has occasionally undergone a degree of acculturation. This is evident in Isango Portobello's 2010 production of the play Aesop's Fables at the Fugard Theatre in Cape Town, South Africa. Based on a script by British playwright Peter Terson (1983), it was radically adapted by the director Mark Dornford-May as a musical using native African instrumentation, dance and stage conventions. Although Aesop is portrayed as Greek, and dressed in the short Greek tunic, the all-black production contextualises the story in the recent history of South Africa. The former slave, we are told "learns that liberty comes with responsibility as he journeys to his own freedom, joined by the animal characters of his parable-like fables." One might compare with this Brian Seward's Aesop's Fabulous Fables (2009), which first played in Singapore with a cast of mixed ethnicities. In it Chinese theatrical routines are merged with those of a standard musical.

There had already been an example of Asian acculturation in 17th-century Japan. There Portuguese missionaries had introduced a translation of the fables (Esopo no Fabulas, 1593) that included the biography of Aesop. This was then taken up by Japanese printers and taken through several editions under the title Isopo Monogatari. Even when Europeans were expelled from Japan and Christianity proscribed, this text survived, in part because the figure of Aesop had been assimilated into the culture and depicted in woodcuts as dressed in Japanese costume.