Note that before the age of discovery and the diffusion of pictures and descriptions of primates, most people in the West, and most of Eurasia except for Southern parts more generally, would have had no idea what a monkey was, so the comparison would have made no sense. EDIT - according to /u/thejukeboxhero's comment below, this is false, and "Apes and monkeys appear fairly regularly in bestiaries and sculpture throughout Western Europe and were used variously throughout the medieval period to symbolize the forces of darkness, the devil, the sinful nature of man".

However in terms of general animal caricatures, one example is the Islamic writer Ibn Khaldun, writing in the Muqadimmah in the 1300s:

"Therefore, the Negro nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because (Negroes) have little (that is essentially) human and have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals, as we have stated." Muqaddimah. Chapter 2, Section 23.

Like writers in other slave owning societies, he is attempting to justify slavery of black Africans by denying their humanity and putting them in the same category as animals (which it is already morally ok to 'enslave').

Disclaimer: This response isn't going to answer your question, but it will illuminate how Romans/Europeans would have perceived apes over time.

While controversial and perhaps even legendary, Hanno the Carthaginian made his way around the west coast of Africa in the third century BC. At the furthest point of the voyage, modern estimates are that he would have reached either Sierra Leone or Cameroon. Here, he came to a bay containing an island "having a lake, and in this lake another island full of savage people, the greater part of whom were women, whose bodies were hairy, and whom our interpreters called Gorillae." (Rennie 2) While we don't know if his account is true, an American named Savage discovered our modern conception of gorillas in the mid-nineteenth century. The new gorillas were argued to be the same creature as the Gorillae. If Hanno told the truth, he saw no difference between man and gorilla.

In the 18th century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that 'Pongos' (creatures full of hair) were probably "en effet de véritables hommes Sauvages," or "true savage men." I'm not going to talk about Rousseau's philosophy about savages, but I will say that he is known for arguing that the savage is noble and is a window onto human's 'natural state.' Furthermore, Lord Monboddo famously argued that Orangutans were humans. His rationale was that they were capable of feeling shame, something that was the hallmark of a more civilized being. They also seemed to be capable of speech and using tools. This perception was not isolated, though the differences between humans and apes are much more nuanced.

While not a biographical tale, Voltaire's Candide illuminates some perceptions about apes. While the titular character, Candide, and his servant are travelling through South America, they hear loud shouts from naked girls because two apes were "biting at their buttocks." Candide then shot the apes, killing them. Immediately after, the girls begin to cry as they tenderly embraced the apes. As it turns out, these apes were the women's lovers. Candide, understandably to us, was surprised. Cacambo responds, "Why do you fend it so incredible that in some countries there are apes who win the hearts of young women? They are a quarter human, just as I am a quarter Spanish" (Voltaire 32-33).

I'm sorry that I can't answer your question, as it's out of my reach. But I do hope that this has helped to illustrate the ways that Europeans have perceived apes. As far as they were concerned, there was no firm boundary between ape and human. To some, apes were just as human as any other European. Unfortunately, I don't have any good sources on the differing perspective, who saw apes as being different from us. If any other historians could elaborate on this, I would be thankful.

Sources: Outram, Dorinda. The Enlightenment: New Approaches to European History. Croydon, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Rennie, Neil. Far-Fetched Facts: The Literature of Travel and the Idea of the South Seas. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Voltaire. Candide and Related Texts. trans. David Wootton. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2000.

Depending on the translation you'll find, Maimonides in the 12th century possibly compares Africans (and Turks as well) to apes, at least in terms of philosophical and religious development. In his Guide for the Perplexed, 3:51:

"Those... are all human individuals who have no doctrinal belief, neither one based on speculation nor one that accepts the authority of tradition: such individuals as the furthermost Turks found in the remote North, the Negroes found in the remote South, and those who resemble them from among them that are with us in these climes. The status of those is like that of irrational animals. To my mind they do not have the rank of men, but have among the beings a rank lower than the rank of man but higher than the ram or the apes. For they have the external shape and lineaments of a man and a faculty of discernment that is superior to that of the apes."

Well, according to etymonline.com The word "gorilla" is derived from a Greek word that is derived from an African word in 500B.C.E.

So in this case, the ape name is derived from the human.

gorilla 1847, applied to the apes (Troglodytes gorills) by U.S. missionary Thomas Savage, from Greek gorillai, plural of name given to wild, hairy people in a Greek translation of Carthaginian navigator Hanno's account of his voyage along the N.W. coast of Africa, c.500 B.C.E. Allegedly an African word. In its inmost recess was an island similar to that formerly described, which contained in like manner a lake with another island, inhabited by a rude description of people. The females were much more numerous than the males, and had rough skins: our interpreters called them Gorillae. We pursued but could take none of the males; they all escaped to the top of precipices, which they mounted with ease, and threw down stones; we took three of the females, but they made such violent struggles, biting and tearing their captors, that we killed them, and stripped off the skins, which we carried to Carthage: being out of provisions we could go no further. [Hanno, "Periplus"]