Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: an elusive quarry: In search of ancient Greek popular culture; Explaining the joke: a roadmap for classicists; Synopsis of method and structure of argument -- The Aesopic challenge to Delphic authority: Ideological tensions at Delphi; the Aesopic critique; Neoptolemus and Aesop: sacrifice, hero cult, and competitive scapegoating -- Sophia before/beyond philosophy: the tradition of Sophia; Sophists and (as) sages; Aristotle and the transformation of Sophia -- Aesop as sage: political counsel and discursive practice; Aesop among the sages; Political animals: fable and the scene of advising -- Reading the life: the progress of a sage and the anthropology of Sophia: an Aesopic anthropology of wisdom; Aesop and Ahiqar; Delphic theoria and the death of a sage; the bricoleur as culture hero, or the art of extorting self-incrimination -- The Aesopic parody of high wisdom: demystifying Sophia: Hesiod, Theognis, and the seven sages; Aesopic parody in the visual tradition -- Aesop at the invention of philosophy: the problematic sociopolitics of mimetic prose; the generic affiliations of Sokratikoi logoi -- The battle over prose: fable in sophistic education and Xenophon's Memorabilia: Sophistic fables; traditional fable narration in Xenophon's Memorabilia -- Sophistic fable in Plato: parody, appropriation, and transcendence: Plato's Protagoras: debunking Sophistic fable; Plato's symposium: ringing the changes on fable -- Aesop in Plato's Sokratikoi logoi: analogy, elenchos, and disavowal: Sophia into philosophy: Socrates between the sages and Aesop; the Aesopic bricoleur and the "old Socratic tool-box"; sympotic wisdom, comedy, and Aesopic competition in Hippias major -- Historie and logopoiia: two sides of Herodotean prose: history before prose, prose before history; Aesop ho logopoios; Plutarch reading Herodotus: Aesop, ruptures of decorum, and the non-Greek -- Herodotus and Aesop: Cyrus tells a fable; Greece and (as) fable, or resignifying the hierarchy of genre; fable as history; the Aesopic contract of the histories: Herodotus teaches his readers.

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