Fables and Fabulists: Ancient and Modern

med but one

ro

dges soon the

o

al places, as in the case of Homer, are claimed as his birthplace-Sardis in Lydia, Ammorius, the island of Samos, and Mesembra, a city of T

chus or Caresias of Athens was his first master; the next, Zanthus or Xanthus, a philosopher, of the island of Samos; and

Greece: Periander, Thales, Solon, Cleobulus, Chilo, Bias and Pittacus; but he was eventually esteemed wiser than any of them. The humour with w

undertook was a mission to Delphi to offer sacrifices to Apollo, and to distribute four min?[20] of silver to each citizen. To the character of the Delphians might with justice be applied the saying of a later time: 'The nearer the temple and the farther from God.' Familiarity w

as he was leaving the city, a golden goblet taken from the temple and consecrated to Apollo. Search being made, and the vessel discovered, the charge of sacrilege was brought against him. His judges pronounced him guilty, and he was sentenced to be precipitated from the rock Hyampia. Immediately before his execution he delivered to his persecutors the fable of The Eagle and the Beetle,[2

t them for many years. At length, having consulted the Oracle, they received as answer that which their secret conscience affirmed to be true, that their calamities were due to the death of ?sop, whom they had so unjustly condemned. Thereupon they caused proclamation to be made in all

even of a pleasing cast of countenance; whereas in later years he has been portrayed both by writers and in pictures as deformed in body and repellent in features. Stob?us, it is true, who liv

ance, or by intention, he also confounded the Oriental fabulist, Locman,[22] with ?sop, and clothed the latter in all the admitted deformities of the other. He affirmed him as having been flat-faced, hunch-backed, jolt-headed, blubber-lipped, big-bellied, baker-legged, his body crooked all over, and his complexion of a swarthy hue. Ev

e the statements of the monk. In the first place, Planudes, as we have seen, is an untrustworthy chronicler in other respects, and an account of ?sop, written after the lapse of two thousa

a slave-an unlikely circumstance, assuming him to have been as repulsive in bodily appearance as has been asserted.

ebrated sculptor Lysippus to produce a statue of ?sop, and this they erected in a prominent position in front of those of the seven sages, 'because,' says Ph?drus,[24] 'their severe manner did not persuade, while the jesting of ?sop pleased and instructed at the same tim

Lysi

Sicyon! glo

at the image t

?sop in the

statues of the

nd deep reflect

ll-respected

aws and maxim

wanting in the

gentle Samian

fiction plea

igid censor

tue while he wi

one as representing ?sop with a pleasing cast of countenance, in the midst of a circle of the vario

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 Thracia

ther 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 countrym

TNO

Sui

unces, or a sum estimated

e post,

iously Locman,

. She is also said to have built the Lesser Pyramid out of her accumulated riches, but this is denied by Herodotus, who claims for the

us, Epilog

by, Prefac