The Ape and the Dolphin

[2] Latin versions of the fable began with the explanation that it was a maritime custom to take along pet animals during voyages, and their example was followed during the Renaissance by Gabriele Faerno in "Simius et Delphus", the poem he composed for his very popular collection Fabulae Centum (1563).

Prose accounts of the fable began appearing soon afterwards in Britain, including in the Mythologia Ethica (1689) of Philip Ayres, who also repeats Pliny's observation and titles the story "The Ape and the Dolphin".

[5] So did Roger L'Estrange in his collection of Aesop's fables a few years later, concluding at the end of his reflexion on the story that "we have Apes in History, as well as in Fiction, and not a Rush matter whether they go on Four Legs, or on Two".

These versions were to be found both in books, as in the case of John Lettice[9] and Elizabeth Pipe Wolferstan,[10] or as anonymous submissions to such transient periodicals as The Yorkshireman[11] and The illustrated sailors' magazine, and new nautical miscellany.

[13] In later years, the fable was included in methodical prose accounts, gathered "chiefly from original sources", such as those by the clergyman Thomas James,[14] George Fyler Townsend,[15] and Vernon Jones.