Ancient Aesopic fables were often associated with all marginalized societal groups, all those who were not elite males. While in our extant sources fabulists often have a servile background, there is also some sense that fables are in fact gendered as well. Several authors refer to fables as ‘old wives tales’ or tales told by nurses to their charges, or by mothers to their children. Women, as mothers and nurses, were central to early childhood education in which fables along with fairy tales provided formative lessons. These nursery stories seem to have been used not only for the education of children, especially to warn them of dangers and to initiate them into societal and cultural norms, but also as a means of control over unwanted behaviours. Many of our earliest fables portray female animals, mother figures, who use wisdom and cleverness for the protection and survival of their young. These maternal figures are often presented as the teachers of their children. These fables, while in a sense a record of female voices and concerns in the oral tradition, were frequently usurped and appropriated by the male elite in our written sources. As fables increasingly became part of the written male sphere, especially in the Hellenistic period, there was a shift in this genre towards misogyny and negative female stereotypes within the fables themselves. In order to receive fables into their works these male authors, who were uncomfortable with the powerful female voices, appropriated and altered fable content. As women used fables in order to control their children, so men take possession of fables and construct them according to their own expectations of the feminine thus subordinating the female by replacing the strong female mother figure with lustful, vain, and submissive female characters.