APOCRYPHAL LIFE OF ESOP, THE FABULIST. THE origin of the Beast-Fable is still a vexed question among scholars, some of whom ascribe it to the doctrine of metempsychosis, or the transmigration of human souls into different animal forms; others, again, are of the opinion that beasts and birds were first adopted as characters of fictitious narratives, in order to safely convey reproof or impart wholesome counsel to the minds of absolute princes, who would signally resent "plain speaking." Several nations of antiquity-notably the Greeks, the Hindús, the Egyptians have been credited with the invention of the beast-fable, and there is no reason to believe that it may not have been independently devised in different countries. It is very certain, however, that Esop was not the inventor of this kind of narrative in Greece, while those fables ascribed to him, which have been familiar to us from our nursery days, are mostly spurious, and have been traced to ancient Oriental sources. The so-called Esopic apologue of the Lion and the Mouse is found in an Egyptian papyrus preserved 1 The reader may with advantage consult the article ‘Beast-Fable,' by Mr. Thos. Davidson, in Chambers's Encylopædia, new edition. at Leyden. Many of them are quite modern rechauffes of Hindú apologues, such as the Milkmaid and her Pot of Milk, which gave rise to our popular saying, "Don't count your chickens until they be hatched." Nevertheless, genuine fables of Esop were current in Athens at the best period of its literary history, though it does not appear that they existed in writing during his lifetime. Aristophanes represents a character in one of his plays as learning Esop's fables from oral recitation. When first reduced to writing they were in prose, and Socrates is said to have turned some of them into verse, his example being followed by Babrius, amongst others, of whose version but few fables remain entire. The most celebrated of his Latin translators is Phædrus, who takes care to inform us that If any thoughts in these Iambics shine, The invention's Esop's, and the verse is mine. 2 Little is authentically known regarding the career of the renowned fabulist, who is supposed to have 1 But this papyrus might be of as late a period as the second century of our era. 2 For the most complete history of the Esopic Fable, see vol. i of Mr. Joseph Jacobs' edition of The Fables of Aesop, as first printed by Caxton in 1484, with those of Avian, Alfonso, and Poggio, recently published by Mr. David Nutt; where a vast amount of erudite information will be found on the subject in all its ramifications. Mr. Jacobs, indeed, seems to have left little for future gleaners: he has done his work in a thorough, Benfey-like manner, and students of comparative folk-lore are under great obligations to him for the indefatigable industry he has devoted to the valuable outcome of his wide-reaching learning. been born about B.C. 620, and, as in the case of Homer, various places are assigned as that of his nativity—Samos, Sardis, Mesembria in Thrace, and Cotiæium in Phrygia. He is said to have been brought as a slave to Athens when very young, and after serving several masters was enfranchised by Iadmon, the Samian. His death is thus related by Plutarch: Having gone to Delphos, by the order of Croesus, with a large quantity of gold and silver, to offer a costly sacrifice to Apollo and to distribute a considerable sum among the inhabitants, a quarrel arose between him and the Delphians, which induced him to return the money, and inform the king that the people were unworthy of the liberal benefaction he had intended for them. The Delphians, incensed, charged him with sacrilege, and, having procured his condemnation, precipitated him from a rock and caused his death.-The popular notion that Esop was a monster of ugliness and deformity is derived from a "Life" of the fabulist, prefixed to a Greek collection of fables purporting to be his, said to have been written by Maximus Planudes, a monk of the 14th century, which, however apocryphal, is both curious and entertaining, from whatever sources the anecdotes. may have been drawn. According to Planudes,1 Esop was born at Amorium, in the Greater Phrygia, a slave, ugly exceedingly: he was sharp-chinned, snub-nosed, bull-necked, blubber 1 Fabulae Romanenses Graece conscriptae ex recensione et cum adnotationibus, Alfredi Eberhard (Leipzig, 1872), vol. i, p. 226ff. |