urging her daughter, ‘Now, child, you must

do the right thing, and not venture too far

by keeping up this grudge of yours against Zeus:

let food grow again for people on the earth.’

Demeter could say nothing against this: she allowed

crops then and there to come from the fertile ground;

she freighted the wide world with flowers and leaves.

She went then to the men in power – Diocles,

Triptolemus, Eumolpus, and Celeus himself,

the people’s leader, to give them instruction

in her liturgy and rites: all of the mysteries

neither to be questioned, nor departed from,

and not to be spoken about for fear of the gods,

a fear so great as to stop every mouth.

Whoever has witnessed these is blessed among men:

whoever has not been inducted, whoever

has taken no part in them, can expect no good

fortune when death fetches him to the darkness.

Once she had revealed all of this, Demeter

returned to Olympus and the company of the gods;

there she and Persephone, holy and powerful,

live beside Zeus himself, where he plays with thunder.

Anyone whom they favour is deeply blessed,

for they send the god Wealth to his own hearth

dispensing affluence to mortal men.

You who protect the people of fragrant Eleusis,

rocky Antron, and Paros surrounded by the sea,

Lady Demeter, mistress, bountiful goddess,

both you and your lovely child Persephone,

favour me for this hymn, give me a living,

and I will heed you in my songs, now and always.

THE LIFE OF AESOP

The Life of Aesop

Anon.

Translated from the Spanish by John E. Keller and L. Clark Keating, 1993

A number of classical writers gathered together collections of fables under his name, but very little is known of Aesop himself. Legend has it that he was born a slave in the sixth century BC and earned his freedom before carrying his stories across the Greek world. The following two extracts come from an anonymous Life of Aesop, which is something of a fable in itself. Thought to have been assembled some time before the second century AD, the fictional biography was translated widely and proved very popular down the ages. This translation is wonderfully seamless despite being a few stages removed from the earliest texts. It is an English translation of a Spanish version of the story from the fifteenth century.

I

The young Aesop, a disabled slave, proves his cunning.