A Great City was besieged, and its inhabitants were called together to consider the best means of protecting it from the enemy. A Bricklayer earnestly recommended bricks as affording the best material for an effective resistance. A Carpenter, with equal enthusiasm, proposed timber as a preferable method of defense. Upon which a Currier stood up and said, “Sirs, I differ from you altogether: there is no material for resistance equal to a covering of hides; and nothing so good as leather.”
Credits
Aesop was an ancient Greek storyteller, traditionally believed to have lived around the 6th century BCE, whose fables have shaped moral literature across the world for over two millennia. "The Three Tradesmen" is one of his shorter, sharper fables — notable for delivering its lesson without a stated moral, leaving the reader to draw their own conclusion.
