Ebook: Aesopic conversations: popular tradition, cultural dialogue, and the invention of Greek prose

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.