[150]. The Vulg. has, iter autem devium ducit ad mortem (but this pregnant sense of iter devium, is too bold).
[151]. Analogous only, because apparently it had both a tree and a fountain of life, like a New Zealand myth mentioned by Schirren.
[152]. Curtius, History of Greece, ii. 52.
[153]. Ewald infers from xvii. 16 that even in early times it was customary to fee the ‘wise men’ for their advice (comp. Saul and Samuel). At a later time Sirach says, ‘Buy (instruction) for yourselves without money’ (Ecclus. li. 25, but comp. 28). The Rabbis were not allowed to receive fees from their pupils. R. Zadok said, ‘Make not (the Tora) a crown to glory in, nor an axe to live by’ (Pirke Aboth, iv. 9). So the Moslem teachers at the great Cairo ‘university’ (el Azhar).
[154]. In the Midrash-literature, proverbs are often quoted with an express statement that they are from the lips of the people.
[155]. See Smith and Sayce’s Chaldæan Genesis, pp. 140-154. For the Egyptian animal-fables, which may be the originals of those of Æsop, see Mahaffy, Prolegomena to Anc. Hist., p. 390; for the Indian, see the apologues of the Panchatantra by Benfey or Lancereau, and the Buddhist Birth-Stories—‘the oldest, most complete, and most important collection of folk-lore extant’—translated by Rhys Davids, vol. i.
[156]. The Bible for Young People, E. T., iii. 105-6.
[157]. 1 Kings x. 1; comp. Menander’s account in Josephus, Antiq. viii. 5, 3.
[158]. From Max Müller’s translation of the Dhammapada, or ‘Path of Virtue’ (1870).
[159]. Dr. Back gives a list of these in Grätz’s Monatsschrift, 1854, pp. 265-7.