Aesope's fables

The name of Aesop is as widely known as any that has come down from Graeco-Roman antiquity [yet] it is far from certain whether a historical Aesop ever existed ... in the latter part of the fifth century something like a coherent Aesop legend appears, and Samos seems to be its home.

A woodcut from La vida del Ysopet con sus fabulas historiadas (Spain, 1489) depicting a hunchbacked Aesop surrounded by events from the stories in Planudes' version of his life

The earliest Greek sources, including Aristotle, indicate that Aesop was born around 620 BCE in Thrace at a site on the Black Sea coast which would later become the city Mesembria. A number of later writers from the Roman imperial period (including Phaedrus, who adapted the fables into Latin) say that he was born in Phrygia. The 3rd-century poet Callimachus called him "Aesop of Sardis and the later writer Maximus of Tyre called him "the sage of Lydia.