The Fables of Æsop, and Others. Aesop
Ennius and Horace have embellished their poetry from his stores; and ancient sages and authors all concur in bearing the most ample testimony to his distinguished merits. Plutarch, in his imaginary banquet of the seven wise men, among several other illustrious persons of ancient times, celebrated for their wit and knowledge, introduces Æsop, and describes him as being very courtly and polite in his behaviour. Upon the authority of Plutarch also, we fix the life of Æsop in the time of Crœsus, king of Lydia, who invited him to the court of Sardis. By this prince, he was holden in such esteem, as to be sent as his envoy to Periander, king of Corinth, which was about three hundred and twenty years after the time in which Homer lived, and 550 before Christ. He was also deputed by Crœsus to consult the oracle of Delphi. While on this embassy, he was ordered to distribute to each of the citizens, four minæG of silver, but some disputes arising between them and Æsop, he reproached them for their indolence, in suffering their lands to lie uncultivated, and in depending on the gratuities of strangers for a precarious subsistence: the quarrel, which it would appear ran high between them, ended in Æsop’s sending back the money to Sardis. This so exasperated the Delphians, that they resolved upon his destruction; and that they might have some colour of justice for what they intended, they concealed among his effects, when he was taking his departure from Delphi, a gold cup, consecrated to Apollo; and afterwards pursuing him, easily found what they themselves had hidden. On the pretext that he had committed this sacrilegious theft, they carried him back to the city, and notwithstanding his imprecating upon them the vengeance of heaven, they immediately condemned him to be cast from the rock Hypania, as the punishment of the pretended crime. Ancient historians say, that for this wickedness, the Delphians were for a long time visited with pestilence and famine, until an expiation was made, and then the plague ceased.
A The curious enquirer is referred to the Essay on the Æsopean Fable, by Sir Brooke Boothby, bart. from which this sketch is extracted.
B Planudes lived at Constantinople in the 14th century. His Fables were printed at Milan, A.D. 1480.
C The first person who took great pains to detect and expose the follies and absurdities of Planudes’s Life of Æsop, and collected what could be known, was Bachet de Mezeriac, a man of great learning, who flourished about the year 1632.
D These sages were Solon, Thales, Chilo, Cleobulus, Bias, Pittacus, and Periander, to whom Laertius adds Anacharsis, Maro, Pherecydes, Epimenides, and Pisistratus.
E “Ye men of Samos, let me entreat you to do as the Fox did; for this man, having got money enough, can have no further occasion to rob you; but if you put him to death, some needy person will fill his place, whose wants must be supplied out of your property.”
The Fable of the Fox and the Hedgehog was applied by Themistocles to dissuade the Athenians from removing their magistrates.—B. Boothby.
F The Fable of the Frogs desiring a King.
G The mina of silver was 12 ounces, about £3 sterling.
It was not until many ages after the death of Æsop, that his most prominent successor, Phædrus, arose. He translated Æsop’s Fables from the Greek into Latin, and added to them many of his own. Of Phædrus little is known, except from his works. He is said to have lived in the times of the Emperors Augustus and Tiberius, and to have died in the reign of the latter. The first printed edition of his Fables, with cuts, was published at Gauda, in 1482. Caxton published some of them in 1484, and Bonus Accursius in 1489, to which he prefixed Planudes’s Life of Æsop. But the most perfect edition of Phædrus’s Works was published in five volumes, by Peter Pithou, at Troyes, in 1596, from manuscripts discovered by him in the cities of Rheims and Dijon. To these have succeeded in later times, a numerous list of fabulists,H besides such of the poets as have occasionally interspersed Fables in their works. These, in their day, have had, and many of them still have, their several admirers; but Gay and Dodsley best maintain their ground in this country, as is proved by the regular demand for new editions. Croxall’s Fables, which were first published in 1722, with cuts on metal, in the manner of wood, have also had a most extensive sale; and Sir Brooke Boothby’s elegant little volumes, in verse, published in 1809, are now making their way into the public notice. The Editor of the present volume, in attempting to continue the same pleasing mode of conveying instruction, long since laid down as a guide to virtue, has quoted and compiled from other fabulists, whatever seemed best suited to his purpose. His sole object is utility, and he is not altogether without hope, that in attempting to embellish and perpetuate a fabric, which has its foundations laid in religion and morality, his efforts may not be wholly ineffectual to induce the young to keep steadily in view those great truths, which form the sure land-mark to the haven, where only they can attain peace and happiness.
H Sir Roger L’Estrange, born 1616, died 1704. John de la Fontaine, born 1621, died 1695. John Dryden, born 1631, died 1701. Antoine Houdart de la Motte, born 1672, died 1731. John Gay, born 1688, died 1732. Samuel Croxall, D. D. Archdeacon of Hereford, died 1752. Edward Moore, died 1757. Draper. Robert Dodsley, born 1703, died 1764. William Wilkie, born 1721, died 1772. Abbe Brotier, born 1722, died 1789.
THE TABLE OF CONTENTS.
| A | |
| PAGE | |
| The Ape and her Young Ones | 3 |
| The Sensible Ass | 69 |
| Æsop and the Impertinent Fellow | 81 |
| The Angler and the Little Fish | 111 |
| The Ass and the Lion hunting | 161 |
| The Ass in the Lion’s Skin | 187 |
| The Ape chosen King | 195 |
| The Ant and the Fly | 269 |
| The Ant and the Grasshopper | 307 |
| The Ape and the Fox | 319 |
| Æsop at Play | 333 |
|
The Ass eating | |