Philocleon’s Fables: Ancient Storytelling and a Modern Analogue

Abstract

“Come now,” Bdelycleon says to his father Philocleon, “do you know how to tell serious stories? Men will be present who are clever and know a lot.” Philocleon suggests stories of Lamia or little kneading trough and its mother, but Bdelycleon has a different kind in mind: “Not fairy-tales, but stories of people, the kind we tell most often, normal stories.”1 (Ar. Vesp. 1174–81).