Etiological Tales
An important function of folklore and mythology in all cultures is to offer explanations as to why things are as they are. Specialists refer to such explanatory tales as etiological tales, stories about causes. They are also called
pourquoi
tales from the French word for “why.” These accounts can be religiously serious or playfully fictitious. There are many etiological tales among the fables of Aesop, and they belong almost exclusively to the playful category. The previously quoted admonition of Phaedrus, the compiler of the oldest Aesop collection still extant, is of special significance with reference to etiological tales: “Remember that I speak in jest of things that never happened.”
Etiological tales by a different author and in another context can take on the gravity of a creation myth, but it is unlikely that the ancient Greeks took very seriously the humorous Aesopic account as to why the tortoise carries his house on his back as recorded in “Jupiter and the Tortoise” (no. 71). Similarly, “Mercury and the Tradesmen” (no. 95), an explanation as to why all tradesmen lie, but especially the horse dealers, is much more of a “used-car salesman joke” than it is a theological treatise, in spite of its reference to one of the classical deities. Yet another lighthearted Aesopic etiological fable invoking a deity is “The Bee and Jupiter” (no. 40), which explains why bees have barbed stingers that cost them their lives when they use them.
Even those etiological fables that comment on grave philosophical issues do so in a playful manner. I let three examples suffice: “The Man, the Horse, the Ox, and the Dog” (no. 234) justifies the increasingly difficult stages of human life as one ages. “The Goods and the Ills” (no. 24) shows why there appears to be more evil than good on earth. And “Prometheus and the Making of Man” (no. 279) explains why some people have the bodies of men but the souls of beasts. These are weighty topics, and the brief fables that address them do not claim to solve the problems that they embody, but then neither do they simply brush such problems aside, pretending that they do not exist.
