Aesop

Aesop, if he existed, was a slave on Samos in the sixth century BCE, freed for his wit, and killed at Delphi; Herodotus mentions him, and the ancient Life is a folktale. The Fables, short tales of animals with a moral attached, the fox and the grapes, the tortoise and the hare, the boy who cried wolf, were collected in Greek and Latin verse over the following centuries and became the first book of every European schoolchild. Socrates put them into verse in prison, La Fontaine made them French poetry, and they remain the shortest way to teach that actions have consequences.