The Subaritikoi logoi, a genre of Greek fables that can be translated as ‘discourse from Sybaris’ or even as ‘Sybaritic tales,’ is considered distinct from the better-known ancient Greek genre of Aesopic fables, since “Sybaritic’ tales feature talking humans rather than talking animals as the main characters. In this presentation, I ask: are fables about talking humans really distinct, in moral purpose, from fables about talking animals? I will begin by analyzing a fable that seems Sybaritic on the outside but reveals Aesopic elements in the deep structure of its storytelling. The story is commonly known as The Thief and the Innkeeper, but the first of the two characters, when we examine the subtext, is not just a thief: more than that, he is a would-be werewolf, that is, a man who could turn into a wolf in other versions of the story. Next I examine another fable that appears at first glance to be Sybaritic on the outside. The fable is a tale retold by a character featured in a comedy of Aristophanes, The Wasps. Known as “Aesop and the Bitch,” the fable casts Aesop himself as one of the story’s two characters, actually, the only talking one as the other character does not talk at all but only barks. It is a nasty beast of a dog, a bitch who threatens to attack Aesop, barking at him furiously, as if Aesop were some devious thief. But may we claim that the tale told here is really a “beast fable”—if the beast does not talk? For an answer, the existing evidence needs to be analyzed from a comparative point of view. And a vital aspect of that evidence is what the text can tell us about a primary historical context for the practice of retelling fables. As I will argue, such a context is in this particular instance, an elite gathering of sorts, where aristocrats perform fables as a demonstration of their education in verbal art—in many ways comparable with Kalila wa Dimna.