It is in the fitness of things that the early biographies of Æsop, the great fabulist, should be entirely fabulous. Macrobius has distinguished between fabula and fabulosa narratio: "He would have a fable to be absolutely false, and a fabulous narration to be a number of fictions built upon a foundation of truth." The Lives of Æsop belong chiefly to the latter category. In the following pages what is known of the life of Æsop is set forth, together with condensed versions of some of his most characteristic fables, which have long passed into the wisdom of all nations, this being a subject that calls for treatment on somewhat different lines from the majority of the works dealt with in The World's Greatest Books.
Introductory
Pierre Bayle, in his judicious fashion, sums up what is said of Æsop in antiquity, resting chiefly upon Plutarch. "Plutarch affirms: (1) That Crœsus sent Æsop to Periander, the Tyrant of Corinth, and to the Oracle of Delphi; (2) that Socrates found no other expedient to obey the God of Dreams, without injuring his profession, than to turn the Fables of Æsop into verse; (3) that Æsop and Solon were together at the Court of Crœsus, King of Lydia; (4) that those of Delphi, having put Æsop to death cruelly and unjustly, and finding themselves exposed to several calamities on account of this injustice, made a public declaration that they were ready to make satisfaction to the memory of Æsop; (5) that having treated thereupon with a native of Samos, they were delivered from the evil that afflicted them."
To this summary Bayle added a footnote concerning "The Life of Æsop, composed by Meziriac": "It is a little book printed at Bourg-en-Bress, in 1632. It contains only forty pages in 16. It is becoming exceedingly scarce.... This is what I extract from it. It is more probable that Æsop was born at Cotiœum, a town of Phrygia, than that he was born at Sardis, or in the island of Samos, or at Mesembria in Thrace. The first master that he served was one Zemarchus, or Demarchus, surnamed Carasius, a native and inhabitant of Athens. Thus it is probable that it was there he learned the purity of the Greek tongue, as in its spring, and acquired the knowledge of moral philosophy which was then in esteem....
"In process of time he was sold to Xanthus, a native of the Isle of Samos, and afterwards to Idmon, or Iadmnon, the philosopher, who was a Samian also, and who enfranchised him. After he had recovered his liberty, he soon acquired a great reputation among the Greeks; so that the report of his singular wisdom having reached the ears of Crœsus, he sent to inquire after him; and having conceived an affection for him, he obliged him by his favours to engage himself in his service to the end of his life. He travelled through Greece—whether for his own pleasure or for the private affairs of Crœsus is uncertain—and passing by Athens, soon after Pisistratus had usurped the sovereign power there and had abolished the popular state, and seeing that the Athenians bore the yoke very impatiently, he told them the Fable of the Frogs that asked a King of Jupiter. Afterwards he met the Seven Wise Men in the City of Corinth at the Tyrant Periander's. Some relate that, in order to show that the life of man is full of miseries, and that one pleasure is attended with a thousand pains, Æsop used to say that when Prometheus took the clay to form man, he did not temper it with water, but with tears."
Concerning the death of this extraordinary man we read that Æsop went to Delphi, with a great quantity of gold and silver, being ordered by Crœsus to offer a great sacrifice to Apollo, and to give a considerable sum to each inhabitant. The quarrel which arose between the Delphians and him was the occasion, after his sending away the sacrifice, of his sending back the money to Crœsus; for he thought that those for whom this prince designed it had rendered themselves unworthy of it. The inhabitants of Delphi contrived an accusation of sacrilege against him, and, pretending that they had convicted him, cast him down from the top of a rock.
Bayle has a long line of centuries at his back when he says: "Æsop's lectures against the faults of men were the fullest of good sense and wit that can be imagined." He substantiates this affirmation in the following manner: "Can any inventions be more happy than the images Æsop made use of to instruct mankind? They are exceedingly fit for children, and no less proper for grown persons; they are all that is necessary to perfect a precept —I mean the mixture of the useful with the agreeable." He then quotes Aulus Gellius as saying: "Æsop the Phrygian fabulist was not without reason esteemed to be wise, since he did not, after the manner of the philosophers, severely and imperiously command such things as were fit to be advised and persuaded, but by feigning, diverting and entertaining apologues, he insinuates good and wholesome advice into the minds of men with a kind of willing attention."
Bayle continues: "At all times these have been made to succeed the homespun stories of nurses. 'Let them learn to tell the Fables of Æscop, which succeed the stories of the nursery, in pure and easy style, and afterwards endeavour to write in the same familiar manner.' They have never fallen into contempt. Our age, notwithstanding its pride and delicacy, esteems and admires them, and shows them in a hundred different shapes. The inimitable La Fontaine has procured them in our time a great deal of honour and glory; and great commendations are given to the reflections of an English wit, Sir Roger L'Estrange, on these very fables."
Since the period when Pierre Bayle composed his great biographical dictionary, the Fables of Æsop have perhaps suffered something of a relapse in the favour of grown persons; but if one may judge from the number of new editions illustrated for children, they are still the delight of modern nurseries. There is this, however, to be said of contemporary times—that the multitude of books in a nursery prevent children from acquiring the profound and affectionate acquaintance with Æsop which every child would naturally get when his fables were almost the only book provided by the Press for juvenile readers.
It is questionable whether the fables will any longer produce the really deep effect which they certainly have had in the past. But we may be certain that some of them will always play a great part in the wisdom of the common people, and that these particularly true and striking apologues are secure of an eternal place in the literature of nations. As an example of what we mean, we will tell as simply as possible some of the most characteristic fables.