These few facts are all that can be relied on with any degree of

certainty, in reference to the birth, life, and death of Æsop. They
were first brought to light, after a patient search and diligent
perusal of ancient authors, by a Frenchman, M. Claude Gaspard Bachet de
Mezeriac, who declined the honour of being tutor to Louis XIII. of
France, from his desire to devote himself exclusively to literature. He
published his Life of Æsop, Anno Domini 1632. The later investigations
of a host of English and German scholars have added very little to the
facts given by M. Mezeriac. The substantial truth of his statements has
been confirmed by later criticism and inquiry. It remains to state,
that prior to this publication of M. Mezeriac, the life of Æsop was
from the pen of Maximus Planudes, a monk of Constantinople, who was
sent on an embassy to Venice by the Byzantine Emperor Andronicus the
elder, and who wrote in the early part of the fourteenth century. His
life was prefixed to all the early editions of these fables, and was
republished as late as 1727 by Archdeacon Croxall as the introduction
to his edition of Æsop. This life by Planudes contains, however, so
small an amount of truth, and is so full of absurd pictures of the
grotesque deformity of Æsop, of wondrous apocryphal stories, of lying
legends, and gross anachronisms, that it is now universally condemned
as false, puerile, and unauthentic.[20] It is given up in the present
day, by general consent, as unworthy of the slightest credit.