The present volume gathers the works published by L.P. on ancient fables and, more generally, on Aesopic traditions, including the Aesop Romance. Although some of them come from the 1990s, the majority were written in the 1960s, when L.P. undertook a systematic and comprehensive study of Graeco-Roman fables.
The turbulent history of this project, already conceived in 1952 (with a title very similar to that of the volume reviewed here) but never brought to completion, is skilfully reconstructed by the two editors, Niccoli and Grazzini in their extensive introduction to the collection. In their essay they place the investigation carried out by L.P. within the Italian cultural context of the time, highlighting his ethical and political compromises, especially evident in the article ʻLa morale della favola esopica come morale delle classi subalterne'. However, there is no attempt to frame L.P.'s original contribution within studies on the Aesopic tradition. More attention to this aspect would have led to a better appreciation of his contributions on the Aesop Romance; above all, it would have made clearer the importance of this publication for scholars interested in the ancient world.
The articles are not presented in chronological order, but according to the thematical sequence planned in the above-mentioned project. For this reason, the most recent article is placed at the beginning and not at the end. This text (Chapter 1), originally an introduction to a pocket edition of Aesop's fables, offers a brief summary of the planned book and thus provides a frame for the subsequent articles, which appear as individual pieces of an incomplete mosaic. This chapter is followed by a pair of chapters on the Near Eastern origin of the fable. The first (Chapter 2) is an informative synthesis, while the second (Chapter 3), consisting of three sections, brings together two articles published in 1964 and 1991. The second section, drawn from the article of 1964, seems to identify in a Babylonian dialogue the same opposition between a foolish master and a clever slave that defines a significant part of the Aesop Romance. This hypothesis needs further verification, but nevertheless invites caution against seeing this aspect as a Greek innovation.
The Aesop Romance is discussed in Chapter 4, which adds to an important article published in Athenaeum, a lesser-known review of A. Wiechers's volume Aesop in Delphi (1961). The prudence and philological acumen with which L.P. evaluates Wiechers's often too fanciful hypotheses has unfortunately not received its due acceptance in subsequent studies: the idea of Aesop as a φαρμακός is commonly accepted and has recently been further developed, for instance, by T. Compton (Victim of the Muses [2006], pp. 34–6) and L. Kurke (Aesopic Conversations [2011], pp. 85–94). However, L.P.'s objection that the death of Aesop, an innocent victim, has no expiatory or purifying character is reasonable and, in my opinion, decisive in invalidating this widespread idea. The fact that the analogies drawn by Wiechers can find other, and often better, explanations is even more valid with respect to the recent studies mentioned above that have multiplied the number of possible analogies. With L.P. one can at most concede a possible influence of the rite of the φαρμακός on the way in which Aesop is killed, but the analogies stop here.
The article published in Athenaeum offers further examples of this philological caution. For example, perhaps it is more prudent to believe that Herodotus’ silence on the encounter between Aesop and Croesus is due to the fact that the historian was not familiar with the episode and that, therefore, it arose later, as suggested by L.P., rather than to believe in a deliberate manipulation, with the figure of Aesop replaced by Herodotus with Bias or Pittacus (Kurke, Aesopic Conversations, pp. 126–8).
The presentation of Phaedrus’ fables (Chapter 5) and the discussion of Nøjgaard's La Fable Antique (Chapter 6) anticipate ʻLa Morale' (Chapter 7). It is enough to read the short preface to the volume to understand the extent to which ʻLa Morale' constitutes, for L.P., the still-valid heart of his own reflection on the ancient fable. However, this study seems to have had a very limited influence outside Italy. It is only mentioned, without comment, by N. Holzberg (The Ancient Fable [2002]) and C. Zafiropoulos (Ethics in Aesop's Fables [2001]). Even S. Forsdyke (Slaves Tell Tales [2012]) does not make use of this essay, justifying her decision by its non-chronological approach. Most probably this article's lack of impact is due to the context in which it was published: in the journal Società, a forum for cultural discussion of post-war Italian Marxist thought, presumably unknown to the great majority of non-Italian classicists.
The idea that the Aesopic fable was originally an expression of slaves, one of the most problematic elements of L.P.'s work, appeared already in his presentation of Phaedrus’ Fables. However, in ʻLa Morale' one notes a certain hesitation: sometimes he refers explicitly to slaves, but sometimes (e.g. in the title ʻclassi subalterne') he mentions plebeians and proletarians together with slaves (p. 323), and prefers to speak about ‘le classi umili’ (p. 314) or ‘strati sociali di economia più precaria’ (p. 303). There is no decisive external evidence to confirm that fables were specifically linked to slaves or the lower classes in the ancient world. L.P. makes no attempt to prove this assumption; for him, having directly experienced the mentality of the rural plebs of southern Italy, it was evident from the ethical content of the fables. It is true that Aesop is represented as a slave; however, fables were used already in archaic times in very different contexts.
Recent studies inspired by the anthropologist James Scott also infer the popular character of fables from their content, on the basis of comparison with other cultures. The Gramscian reflections carried out by L.P. can help overcome the misunderstanding at the core of these studies and of those that radically deny the popular character of fables. Holzberg, identifying popular culture with the spirit of rebellion, easily shows that this spirit is almost completely absent from the extant corpus of fables, while Forsdyke is forced to make bold interpretations and to emphasise the importance of a limited number of fables in order to find in them a revolutionary intention. In ʻLa Morale' the analysis of the tendencies prevailing in the fables is entirely lucid and naturally deduced from the texts: L.P. construes the corpus as transmitting a strongly pessimistic and resigned vision of the world and society, but at the same time endowed with an empirical and utilitarian rationalism (free from the fanciful perspectives of religion), in which he sees the seed of scientific thought. LP. reminds us that it is equally wrong to see in popular culture systematic and revolutionary thought or a simple derivation of the dominant ideology. L.P. gives an early example of a masterful use of the section of Gramsci's Prisons Books, entitled ʻLe osservazioni sul folklore'. Some recent studies in Classics devoted to popular culture have, perhaps too quickly, accepted James Scott's ill-informed criticism of Gramsci for not acknowledging any originality in popular culture. On the contrary, Italian anthropology and many representatives of ‘Cultural Studies’ have been and are still nourished by Gramsci's reflections in order to highlight the existence and originality of popular culture.
Hopefully, this new publication of L.P.'s studies on the Greek fable, in particular ʻLa Morale', will help avoid this misunderstanding and allow scholars to rediscover this line of enquiry.
