Who is Aesop? Aesop is the name of the man credited with the authorship of a collection or book of fables. Aesop was a slave who many believe lived in Samos, a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea but others say he came from Ethiopia. The name of his first owner was Xanthus. It is believed that he eventually became a free man. In Aesop's biography Planudes describes Aesop an ugly, deformed dwarf, and the famous marble statue at the Villa Albani in Rome depicts Aesop accordingly.