According to Planudes,[130] Esop was born at Amorium, in the Greater Phrygia, a slave, ugly exceedingly: he was sharp-chinned, snub-nosed, bull-necked, blubber-lipped, and extremely swarthy (whence his name, Ais-ôpos, or Aith-ôpos: burnt-face, blackamoor); pot-bellied, crook-legged, and crook-backed; perhaps uglier even than the Thersites of Homer; worst of all, tongue-tied, obscure and inarticulate in his speech; in short, everything but his mind seemed to mark him out for a slave. His first master sent him out to dig one day. A husbandman having presented the master with some fine fresh figs, they were given to a slave to be set before him after his bath. Esop had occasion to go into the house; meanwhile the other slaves ate the figs, and when the master missed them they accused Esop, who begged a moment’s respite: he then drank some warm water and caused himself to vomit, and as he had not broken his fast his innocence was thus manifest. The same test discovered the thieves, who by their punishment illustrated the proverb:
Whoso against another worketh guile
Thereby himself doth injure unaware.[131]
Next day the master goes to town. Esop works in the field, and entertains with his own food some travellers who had lost their way, and sets them on the right road again. They are really priests of Artemis, and having received their blessing he falls asleep, and dreams that Tychê (i.e. Fortune) looses his tongue, and gives him eloquence. Waking, he finds he can say bous, onos, dikella, (ox, ass, mattock). This is the reward of piety, for “well-doing is full of good hopes.” Zenas, the overseer, is rebuked by Esop for beating a slave. This is the first time he has been heard to speak distinctly. Zenas goes to his master and accuses Esop of having blasphemed him and the gods, and is given Esop to sell or give away as he pleases. He sells him to a trader for three obols (4½d.), Esop pleading that, if useless for aught else, he will do for a bugbear to keep his children quiet. When they arrive home the little ones begin to cry. “Was I not right?” quoth Esop, and the other slaves think he has been bought to avert the Evil Eye.
The merchant sets out for Asia with all his house-hold. Esop is offered the lightest load, as being a raw recruit. From among the bags, beds, and baskets he chooses a basket full of bread—“a load for two men.” They laugh at his folly, but let him have his will, and he staggers under the burden to the wonder of his master. But at the first halt for ariston, or breakfast, the basket is half-emptied, and by the evening wholly so, and then Esop marches triumphantly ahead, all commending his wit. At Ephesus the merchant sells all his slaves, excepting a musician, a scribe, and Esop. Thence he goes to Samos, where he puts new garments on the two former (he had none left for Esop), and sets them out for sale, Esop between them. Xanthus, the philospher, lived at Samos. He goes to the slave market, and, seeing the three, praises the dealer’s cunning in making the two look handsomer than they were by contrast with the ugly one. Asking the scribe and the musician what they know, their answer is, “Everything,” upon which Esop laughs. The price of the musician (1000 obols, or six guineas) and of the scribe (three times that sum) prevents the philosopher from buying them, and he turns to Esop to see what he is made of. He gives him the customary salutation, “Khaire!” (Rejoice). “I wasn’t grieving,” retorts Esop. “I greet thee,” says Xanthus. “And I thee,” replies Esop. “What are thou?” “Black.” “I don’t mean that, but in what sort of place wast thou born?” “My mother didn’t tell me whether in the second floor or the cellar.” “What can you do?” “Nothing.” “How?” “Why, these fellows here say they know how to do everything, and they haven’t left me a single thing.” “By Jove,” cries Xanthus, “he has answered right well; for there is no man who knows everything. That was why he laughed, it is clear.” In the end, Xanthus buys Esop for sixty obols (about 7s. 6d.) and takes him home, where his wife (who is “very cleanly”) receives him only on sufferance.
One day Xanthus, meeting friends at the bath, sends Esop home to boil pease (idiomatically using the word in the singular), for his friends are coming to eat with him. Esop boils one pea and sets it before Xanthus, who tastes it and bids him serve up. The water is then placed on the table, and Esop justifies himself to his distracted master, who then sends him for four pig’s feet. While they boil, Xanthus slyly abstracts one, and when Esop discovers this he takes it for a plot against him of the other slaves. He runs into the yard, cuts a foot from the pig feeding there, and tosses it into the pot. Presently the other foot is put back, and Esop is confounded to see five trotters on the boil. He serves them up, however, and when Xanthus asks him what the five mean he replies: “How many feet have two pigs?” Xanthus saying, “Eight,” quoth Esop: “Then here are five, and the porker feeding below goes on three.” On being reproached he urges: “But, master, there is no harm in doing a sum in addition and subtraction, is there?” For very shame Xanthus forbears whipping him.
One morning Xanthus gives a breakfast, for which Esop is sent to buy “the best and most useful.” He buys tongues, and the guests (philosophers all) have nothing else. “What could be better for man than tongue?” quoth Esop. Another time he is ordered to get “the worst and most worthless”; again he brings tongues, and again is ready with a similar defence.[132] A guest reviles him, and Esop retorts that he is “malicious and a busybody.” On hearing this Xanthus commands him to find some one who is not a busybody. In the road Esop finds a simple soul and brings him home to his master, who persuades his wife to bear with him in anything he should pretend to do to her; if the guest is a busybody (or one who meddles) Esop will get a beating. The plan fails; for the good man continues eating and takes no notice of the wife-cuffing going on, and when his host seems about to burn her, he only asks leave to bring his own wife to be also placed on the pile.
At a symposium Xanthus takes too much wine, and in bravado wagers his house and all that it contains that he will drink up the waters of the sea. Out of this scrape Esop rescues him by suggesting that he should demand that all the rivers be stopped from flowing into the sea, for he did not undertake to drink them too, and the other party is satisfied.[133]
A party of scientific guests are coming to dinner one day, and Esop is set just within the door to keep out “all but the wise.” When there is a knock at the door Esop shouts: “What does the dog shake?” and all save one go away in high dudgeon, thinking he means them; but this last answers: “His tail,” and is admitted.
At a public festival an eagle carries off the municipal ring, and Esop obtains his freedom by order of the state for his interpretation of this omen—that some king purposes to annex Samos. This, it turns out, is Crœsus, who sends to claim tribute. Hereupon Esop relates his first fable, that of the Wolf, the Dog, and the Sheep, and, going on an embassy to Crœsus, that of the Grasshopper who was caught by the Locust-gatherer. He brings home “peace with honour.” After this Esop travels over the world, showing his wisdom and wit. At Babylon he is made much of by the king. He then visits Egypt and confounds the sages in his monarch’s behalf. Once more he returns to Greece, and at Delphi is accused of stealing a sacred golden bowl and condemned to be hurled from a rock. He pleads the fables of the Matron of Ephesus,[134] the Frog and the Mouse, the Beetle and the Eagle, the Old Farmer and his Ass-waggon, and others, but all is of no avail, and the villains break his neck.