LIFE OF AESOP

The Life and History of Æsop is involved, like that of Homer, the most
famous of Greek poets, in much obscurity. Sardis, the capital of Lydia;
Samos, a Greek island; Mesembria, an ancient colony in Thrace; and
Cotiæum, the chief city of a province of Phrygia, contend for the
distinction of being the birthplace of Æsop. Although the honour thus
claimed cannot be definitely assigned to any one of these places, yet
there are a few incidents now generally accepted by scholars as
established facts, relating to the birth, life, and death of Æsop. He
is, by an almost universal consent, allowed to have been born about the
year 620 B.C., and to have been by birth a slave. He was owned by two
masters in succession, both inhabitants of Samos, Xanthus and Jadmon,
the latter of whom gave him his liberty as a reward for his learning
and wit. One of the privileges of a freedman in the ancient republics
of Greece, was the permission to take an active interest in public
affairs; and Æsop, like the philosophers Phædo, Menippus, and
Epictetus, in later times, raised himself from the indignity of a
servile condition to a position of high renown. In his desire alike to
instruct and to be instructed, he travelled through many countries, and
among others came to Sardis, the capital of the famous king of Lydia,
the great patron, in that day, of learning and of learned men. He met
at the court of Crœsus with Solon, Thales, and other sages, and is
related so to have pleased his royal master by the part he took in the
conversations held with these philosophers, that he applied to him an
expression which has since passed into a proverb, “μᾶλλον ὁ Φρύξ.” “The
Phrygian has spoken better than all.”

On the invitation of Crœsus he fixed his residence at Sardis, and was
employed by that monarch in various difficult and delicate affairs of
State. In his discharge of these commissions he visited the different
petty republics of Greece. At one time he is found in Corinth, and at
another in Athens, endeavouring, by the narration of some of his wise
fables, to reconcile the inhabitants of those cities to the
administration of their respective rulers Periander and Pisistratus.
One of these ambassadorial missions, undertaken at the command of
Crœsus, was the occasion of his death. Having been sent to Delphi with
a large sum of gold for distribution among the citizens, he was so
provoked at their covetousness that he refused to divide the money, and
sent it back to his master. The Delphians, enraged at this treatment,
accused him of impiety, and, in spite of his sacred character as
ambassador, executed him as a public criminal. This cruel death of Æsop
was not unavenged. The citizens of Delphi were visited with a series of
calamities, until they made a public reparation of their crime; and,
“The blood of Æsop” became a well-known adage, bearing witness to the
truth that deeds of wrong would not pass unpunished. Neither did the
great fabulist lack posthumous honours; for a statue was erected to his
memory at Athens, the work of Lysippus, one of the most famous of Greek
sculptors. Phædrus thus immortalizes the event:—

    Æsopo ingentem statuam posuere Attici,
    Servumque collocarunt æternâ in basi:
    Patere honoris scirent ut cuncti viam;
    Nec generi tribui sed virtuti gloriam.