The Travellers and the Plane Tree is one of

Aesop's Fables Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Of diverse origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to ...

, numbered 175 in the

Perry Index The Perry Index is a widely used index of "Aesop's Fables" or "Aesopica", the fables credited to Aesop, the storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC. The index was created by Ben Edwin Perry, a professor of classics at the Un ...

. It may be compared with

The Walnut Tree The Walnut Tree is one of Aesop's fables and numbered 250 in the Perry Index. It later served as a base for a misogynistic proverb, which encourages the violence against walnut trees, asses and women. A fable of ingratitude There are tw ...

as having for theme ingratitude for benefits received. In this story two travellers rest from the sun under a

plane tree ''Platanus'' is a genus consisting of a small number of tree species native to the Northern Hemisphere. They are the sole living members of the family Platanaceae. All mature members of ''Platanus'' are tall, reaching in height. All except f ...

. One of them describes it as useless and the tree protests at this view when they are manifestly benefiting from its shade. The historian

Plutarch Plutarch (; grc-gre, Πλούταρχος, ''Ploútarchos''; ; – after AD 119) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his ''P ...

quotes

Themistocles Themistocles (; grc-gre, Θεμιστοκλῆς; c. 524–459 BC) was an Athenian politician and general. He was one of a new breed of non-aristocratic politicians who rose to prominence in the early years of the Athenian democracy. A ...

as applying the fable to himself, saying 'that the Athenians did not honour him or admire him, but made, as it were, a sort of plane-tree of him; sheltered themselves under him in bad weather, and as soon as it was fine, plucked his leaves and cut his branches.’ But the fable was not included in collections of Aesop's fables in the rest of Europe until the 19th century. One of the first to do so in French was Baron

Goswin de Stassart Goswin Joseph Augustin, Baron de Stassart (2 September 1780 – 16 October 1854) was a Dutch-Belgian politician. Stassart studied accounting and economics in Paris. In 1804 he became Auditor in the French State Council, in 1805 he became Intenda ...

, who included it in his collection of fables, published in 1818 and many times reprinted. There he transposes the scene and makes the travellers a couple of Normandy cider farmers. It was eventually translated by John Henry Keane in 1850 and a prose translation from the Greek appeared in

George Fyler Townsend George Fyler Townsend (1814–1900) was the British translator of the standard English edition of ''Aesop's Fables''. He was the son of George Townsend and was educated at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge -DCL 1876. He was Vicar ...

's collection of Aesop's fables in 1867. A similar story from Ancient China about the survival of a useless tree is told by the 4th century BCE Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu. Its preservation is owed to the fact that it is good for nothing else but providing shade. A similar theme reappears in the ''Hecatomythium'' of

Laurentius Abstemius Laurentius Abstemius (c. 1440–1508) was an Italian writer and professor of philology, born at Macerata in Ancona. His learned name plays on his family name of Bevilaqua (Drinkwater), and he was also known by the Italian name Lorenzo Astemio. A ...

as Fable 12, ''De arboribus pulchris et deformibus'' (Trees fair and crooked). In this an entire plantation is felled to build a house, leaving as the survivor the one tree that cannot be used because it is 'knotty and ill-favoured'. Two hundred years later

Roger L'Estrange Sir Roger L'Estrange (17 December 1616 – 11 December 1704) was an English pamphleteer, author, courtier, and press censor. Throughout his life L'Estrange was frequently mired in controversy and acted as a staunch ideological defender of Kin ...

included the story in his ''Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists'' (1692) and was followed shortly afterwards by Edmund Arwaker in his verse collection, ''Truth in Fiction'' (1708)."The Trees
pp259-60
/ref> All teach that one should be content with one's looks for 'beauty is often harmful'.

References

External links

20th century illustrations from book
online
{{DEFAULTSORT:Travellers and the Plane Tree, The Aesop's Fables Fables by Laurentius Abstemius Fictional trees