Again, it is related that during the years of his slavery Æsop had as mate, or wife, the beautiful Rhodope,[23] also a slave—an unlikely circumstance, assuming him to have been as repulsive in bodily appearance as has been asserted. At all events, any incongruous association of this kind would have been remarked and commented on by earlier writers.
Further, none of Æsop's contemporaries, nor any writers that immediately followed him, make mention of his alleged deformities. On the contrary, the Athenians, about two hundred years after his death, in order to perpetuate his memory and appearance, commissioned the celebrated sculptor Lysippus to produce a statue of Æsop, and this they erected in a prominent position in front of those of the seven sages, 'because,' says Phædrus,[24] 'their severe manner did not persuade, while the jesting of Æsop pleased and instructed at the same time.' It is improbable that the figure of a man monstrously deformed as Æsop is said to have been would have proved acceptable to the severe taste of the Greek mind. An epigram of Agathia, of which the following is a translation,[25] celebrates the erection of this statue:
'To Lysippus.
'Sculptor of Sicyon! glory of thy art!
I laud thee that the image thou hast placed
Of good old Æsop in the foremost part,
More than the statues of the sages graced.
Grave thought and deep reflection may be found
In all the well-respected rolls of these;
In wisdom's saws and maxims they abound,
But still are wanting in the art to please:
Each tale the gentle Samian well has told,
Truth in fair fiction pleasantly imparts;
Above the rigid censor him I hold
Who teaches virtue while he wins our hearts.'
Philostratus, in an account of certain pictures in existence in the time of the Antonines, describes one as representing Æsop with a pleasing cast of countenance, in the midst of a circle of the various animals, and the Geniuses of Fable adorning him with wreaths of flowers and branches of the olive.
Dr. Bentley, in his 'Dissertation,' ridicules the account of Æsop's deformity as given by Planudes in face of all the evidence to the contrary. 'I wish,' says he, 'I could do that justice to the memory of our Phrygian, to oblige the painters to change their pencil. For 'tis certain he was no deformed person; and 'tis probable he was very handsome. For whether he was a Phrygian or, as others say, a Thracian, he must have been sold into Samos by a trader in slaves; and 'tis well known that that sort of people commonly bought up the most beautiful they could light on, because they would yield the most profit.'
Bentley's conjecture that Æsop was 'very handsome' does not find general acceptance; it has, nevertheless, a solid foundation in the fact that the Greeks confined art to the imitation of the beautiful only, reprobating the portrayal of ugly forms, whether human or other. It is not to be believed, therefore, that the chisel of Lysippus was employed in the production of a statue to a deformed person, which not even the gift of wisdom would have rendered acceptable to the severe taste of his countrymen. Without going so far, however, as to accept the view of the learned Master of Trinity, that Æsop was probably very handsome, we may with safety conclude that the objectionable portrait of the sage as drawn by the Byzantine is without justification.
