In 1887 the influential arts-and-crafts book illustrator Walter Crane published The Baby's Own Aesop, bringing the homespun wisdom of ancient Greek peasants to a new generation of children. This lecture uses these fables to tackle the least attractive feature of ancient Greece - institutionalised slavery. Beneath the semi-legendary figure of Aesop himself, a barbarian sold to a Greek slave-owner in the 6th century BCE, lie tens of thousands of his real-life equivalents.

The lecture asks how the ancient fables address power relations in a slave society. Were they primarily stories for and by slaves, or did they serve ruling-class interests?

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/slave-stories-aesop-and-walter-crane

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

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