Aesop

Aesop is the name under which the Greeks handed down their tradition of animal fables, short tales in which foxes, wolves, lions and frogs act out a moral. Ancient writers placed him in the sixth century BC and made him a slave who lived on the island of Samos and was freed for his cleverness; Herodotus mentions him, and Aristophanes quotes his fables. Whether he wrote anything himself is doubtful, and the collections that survive were compiled centuries later by Demetrius of Phalerum, Phaedrus and Babrius. The tortoise and the hare, the fox and the grapes and the boy who cried wolf are all his.