Aesop, in Rhyme

Aesop's Fables

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Title: Aesop's Fables A New Revised Version From Original Sources
Author: Aesop
Illustrator: Harrison Weir, John Tenniel and Ernest Griest
Release Date: July 1, 2006 [EBook #18732]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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FABLES ***

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ÆSOP'S FABLES
A NEW REVISED VERSION

FROM ORIGINAL SOURCES
[Illustration]
WITH UPWARDS OF 200 ILLUSTRATIONS
BY HARRISON WEIR,[A] JOHN TENNIEL, ERNEST GRISET
AND OTHERS
NEW YORK FRANK F. LOVELL & COMPANY 142 AND 144
WORTH STREET
[Illustration]
COPYRIGHT, 1884, BY R. WORTHINGTON.
[Transcriber's note A: Original had "WIER".]

LIFE OF ÆSOP.
The Life and History of Æsop is involved, like that of Homer, the most
famous of Greek poets, in much obscurity. Sardis, the capital of Lydia;
Samos, a Greek island; Mesembria, an ancient colony in Thrace; and
Cotiæum, the chief city of a province of Phrygia, contend for the
distinction of being the birthplace of Æsop. Although the honor thus
claimed cannot be definitely assigned to any one of these places, yet
there are a few incidents now generally accepted by scholars as
established facts, relating to the birth, life, and death of Æsop. He is, by
an almost universal consent, allowed to have been born about the year
620 B.C., and to have been by birth a slave. He was owned by two
masters in succession, both inhabitants of Samos, Xanthus and Jadmon,
the latter of whom gave him his liberty as a reward for his learning and
wit. One of the privileges of a freedman in the ancient republics of
Greece was the permission to take an active interest in public affairs;
and Æsop, like the philosophers Phædo, Menippus, and Epictetus, in
later times, raised himself from the indignity of a servile condition to a
position of high renown. In his desire alike to instruct and to be

instructed, he travelled through many countries, and among others
came to Sardis, the capital of the famous king of Lydia, the great patron
in that day, of learning and of learned men. He met at the court of
Croesus with Solon, Thales, and other sages, and is related so to have
pleased his royal master, by the part he took in the conversations held
with these philosophers, that he applied to him an expression which has
since passed into a proverb, "mallon ho Phryx"--"The Phrygian has
spoken better than all."
On the invitation of Croesus he fixed his residence at Sardis, and was
employed by that monarch in various difficult and delicate affairs of
state. In his discharge of these commissions he visited the different
petty republics of Greece. At one time he is found in Corinth, and at
another in Athens, endeavoring, by the narration of some of his wise
fables, to reconcile the inhabitants of those cities to the administration
of their respective rulers, Pariander and Pisistratus. One of these
ambassadorial missions, undertaken at the command of Croesus, was
the occasion of his death. Having been sent to Delphi with a large sum
of gold for distribution among the citizens, he was so provoked at their
covetousness that he refused to divide the money, and sent it back to
his master. The Delphians, enraged at this treatment, accused him of
impiety, and, in spite of his sacred character as ambassador, executed
him as a public criminal. This cruel death of Æsop was not unavenged.
The citizens of Delphi were visited with a series of calamities, until
they made a public reparation of their crime; and "The blood of Æsop"
became a well-known adage, bearing witness to the truth that deeds of
wrong would not pass unpunished. Neither did the great fabulist lack
posthumous honors; for a statue was erected to his memory at Athens,
the work of Lysippus, one of the most famous of Greek sculptors.
Phædrus thus immortalizes the event:--
Æsopo ingentem statuam posuere Attici, Servumque collocarunt æterna
in basi: Patere honoris scirent ut cuncti viam; Nec generi tribui sed
virtuti gloriam.
These few facts are all that can be relied on with any degree of
certainty, in reference to the birth, life, and death of Æsop. They were

first brought to light, after a patient search and diligent perusal of
ancient authors, by a Frenchman, M. Claude Gaspard Bachet de
Mezeriac, who declined the honor of being tutor to Louis XIII. of
France, from his desire to devote himself exclusively to literature.