The Life of Æsop
, ascribed to Planudes Maximus, a monk of Constantinople in the fourteenth century, and usually prefixed to the Fables, says that he was
'the most deformed of all men of his age, for he had a pointed head, flat nostrils, a short neck, thick lips, was black, pot-bellied, bow-legged, and hump-backed; perhaps even uglier than Homer's Thersites.'
The description of Thersites in the second book of the Iliad is thus translated by Professor Blackie:
The most
Ill-favoured wight was he, I ween, of all the Grecian host.
With hideous squint the railer leered: on one foot he was lame;
Forward before his narrow chest his hunching shoulders came;
Slanting and sharp his forehead rose, with shreds of meagre hair.
Controversies between the Scotists and Thomists, followers of the teaching of Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas, caused Thomist perversion of the name of Duns into its use as Dunce and tradition of the subtle Doctor's extreme personal ugliness. Doctor Subtilis was translated The Lath Doctor.
Scarron we have just spoken of. Hudibras's outward gifts are described in Part I., Canto i., lines 240-296 of the poem.