ABSTRACT
Philocleon suggests stories of Lamia or little kneading trough and its mother, but Bdelycleon has a different kind in mind: “Not fairy-tales, but stories of people, the kind we tell most often, normal stories.” Bdelycleon’s words, “the stories we tell most often, the normal ones,” indicate that storytelling, as on Beech Mountain, was a frequent domestic activity. In his agon with Bdelycleon Philocleon narrates the joys of jury duty, which include being able to hear from the defendants both prose-tales and humorous Aesopic fables--and flute-playing. Philocleon gives the muthoi, Aesopic tales, and funny stories told by defendants in the law courts as one of the pleasures of jury duty. These stories were probably told not just to entertain, but to suggest analogies to the jurors which would tend to exculpate or mitigate the offense of the defendant, just as Agamemnon’s story of Zeus and Ate and Phoenix’s story of his own life do in the Iliad.
