The Life and History of AEsop 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
Cotiaeum, the chief city of a province of Phrygia, contend for the
distinction of being the birthplace of AEsop. 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 AEsop. 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 AEsop, like the philosophers Phaedo, 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 AEsop
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 AEsop" 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. Phaedrus thus immortalizes the event:--
AEsopo ingentem statuam posuere Attici,
Servumque collocarunt aeterna 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 AEsop. 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. He published his
life of AEsop, Anno Domini 1632. The later investigations of a host of
English and German scholars have added very little to the facts given by
M. Mezeriac. The substantial truth of his statements has been confirmed
by later criticism and inquiry.
It remains to state, that prior to this publication of M. Mezeriac, the
life of AEsop was from the pen of Maximus Planudes, a monk of
Constantinople, who was sent on an embassy to Venice by the Byzantine
Emperor Andronicus the elder, and who wrote in the early part of the
fourteenth century. His life was prefixed to all the early editions of
these fables, and was republished as late as 1727 by Archdeacon Croxall
as the introduction to his edition of AEsop. This life by Planudes
contains, however, so small an amount of truth, and is so full of absurd
pictures of the grotesque deformity of AEsop, of wondrous apocryphal
stories, of lying legends, and gross anachronisms, that it is now
universally condemned as false, puerile, and unauthentic. It is given up
in the present day, by general consent, as unworthy of the slightest
credit.
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