Laura GIBBS "Endomythia" and the Morals of Aesopic Fables

The morals of Aesopic fables are not (as most scholarship assumes) limited to epimythia or promythia, but are often voiced in the witty closing remarks of one of the characters, which I will call the "endomythium," the moral inside the story:

-- A farmer's boy was roasting snails.  As they were whistling in the fire, the boy said, "Wretches, why do you sing while your houses are burning?"  The story shows that things done at an inappropriate time are liable to criticism.  [Perry 54]



-- A lamb chased by a wolf hid in a temple.  The wolf warned the lamb that the priest would catch him and kill him.  The lamb replied:  "I'd rather be sacrificed to the god than be destroyed by you."  The story shows that death with honor is preferable if we must die.  [Perry 261]

Sometimes the endomythium actually takes the place of the plot, as in the Aesopic "Belly and the Feet," where the rhetorical endomythium supplants the traditional folk narrative:

The belly and the feet were arguing about their importance, with the feet maintaining they were stronger because they carried the stomach around.  The stomach replied, "But if I didn't eat, you wouldn't have the strength to do any carrying."  So too with armies:  great numbers mean nothing if the generals do not exercise good judgment.  [Perry 130]

The endomythium is witty and direct, but it is also "difficult" because it is still embedded in the fable's enigmatic world:  the endomythium is an encoded message, decoded by the epimythium which avoids metaphorical images (something like the answer to a riddle).  This distinction between the metaphorical endomythium and the literal epimythium parallels the difference between metaphorical proverbs ("Too many cooks spoil the broth") and literal proverbs ("A fool and his money are soon parted").  But while epimythia may lack wit and charm, they have this advantage:  epimythia change over time to reveal different social preoccupations projected onto the unchanging surface of the fables.  An epimythium which seems unexpected, or even "wrong," reveals much about the social milieu which produced it (as in the example where the epimythium oddly glosses the "bellies" as "generals").  This relationship between endomythium and epimythium, which together constitute the moral of the story, is what allows the fables to "make sense" across cultures -- not only in ancient Greece and Rome, but throughout the long life of the Aesopic fable tradition in Europe.