111
The Life of Aesop has survived in two main Greek versions, called Vita W and Vita G. Vita W was used as the basis for the medieval vernacular translations, while Vita G, older and more complete, was discovered later. Both versions are printed by Perry (35-107). There is a modern English translation of the Life by Lloyd W. Daly, and a modern Spanish one by P. Bádenas de la Peña and J. López Facal.
112
My quotations from the Spanish Vida de Esopo are taken from a microfilm copy of La vida y fábulas del claríssimo y sabio fabulador Ysopo, Antwerp, 1541? (hereafter Vida). I have modernized spelling. The above quotation is from Vida fol. 4r.
113
Adrados' article is an expansion of a comment by Elvira Gangutia
comparing Aesop's Life to the Spanish picaresque novel: «Las Vidas de Esopo... nos
muestran una obra que debió de tener una influencia gigantesca a través de la
Edad Media hasta la novela cervantina y picaresca. Pues ¿qué es Esopo, como los
Asnos de Luciano y Apuleyo, sino un criado de muchos amos, al igual del
Lazarillo y el Buscón?»
(173). Holzberg («Lesser-Known 'Picaresque' Novel» 1-2;
«Novel-like Works» 638) also notes the resemblance of the Life of Aesop and its
possible influence on Lazarillo, though without citing Adrados or Gangutia.
114
The first incunable of the Vida de Esopo (aside from an incomplete version published in Zaragoza in 1482) was published in Toulouse, and has been edited by Victoria A. Burrus and Harriet Goldberg as Esopete ystoriado [Toulouse 1488]. The second was published in Zaragoza in 1489, and was edited in facsimile by Emilio Cotarelo y Mori (of which there is an English translation by John E. Keller and L. Clark Keating: Aesop's Fables, with a Life of Aesop). A third was published in Burgos in 1496. For a description of the incunables, see Burrus and Goldberg in Esopete ystoriado xiii-xiv, and for a list of Spanish editions of Aesop up until Cervantes' time, see Cotarelo y Mori's introduction to the Fábulas de Esopo, xx-xxvi.
115
For a more detailed history of the Life's transmission from Greece to Spain, see Adrados, «Vida» 352-54.
116
For an explanation of Sancho's use of the form «Guisopete» see McGrady,
«Notes on Guisopete». Quotations from Don Quijote come from Francisco Rico's
edition. Compare Sancho's remark to the outburst of Peralta reproduced above:
«¡Se nos ha vuelto el tiempo de... Isopo, cuando departía el gallo con la zorra y
unos animales con otros!»
117
The corresponding fable appears in the Vida as «De la rana y del buey» (49v).
118
See «De Júpiter y de las ranas» in Vida 41v.
119
For example, Aesop may be a source of the «sospiros» of Sancho's donkey. which the squire takes to be a good omen in Don Quijote II, 8 (McGrady, «Sospiros»).
120
See also Cipión's speech a little later on: «sea lo que fuere, nosotros
hablamos, sea portento o no; que lo que el cielo tiene ordenado que suceda, no
hay diligencia ni sabiduría humana que lo pueda prevenir»
(2: 301).