He was born in Greece, probably in Phrygia, about 620 years before Christ. He
had more than one master and it was the last, Iadmon, who gave him his liberty
because of his talents and his wisdom. The historian Plutarch recounts his
presence at the court of Croesus, King of Lydia, and his meeting Thales and
Solon there, telling us also that he reproved the wise Solon for discourtesy
toward the king. Aesop visited Athens and composed the famous fable of Jupiter
and the Frogs for the instruction of the citizens. Whether he left any written
fables is very uncertain, but those known by his name were popular in Athens
when that city was celebrated throughout the world for its wit and its learning.
Both Socrates and Plato delighted in them; Socrates, we read, having amused
himself during the last days of his life with turning into verse some of Aesop's
"myths" as he called them. Think of Socrates conning these fables in prison four
hundred years before Christ, and then think of a more familiar picture in our own
day—a gaunt, dark-faced, black-haired boy poring over a book as he lay by the
fireside in a little Western farmhouse; for you remember that Abraham Lincoln's
literary models were "Aesop's Fables," "The Pilgrim's Progress" and the Bible.
Perhaps he read the fable of the Fig Tree, Olive, Vine, and Bramble from the
ninth chapter of Judges, or that of the Thistle and Cedar from the fourteenth
chapter of II Kings and noted that teaching by story-telling was still well in
vogue six hundred years after Aesop.
In later times the fables that had been carried from mouth to mouth for centuries
began to be written down: by Phaedrus in Latin and Babrius in Greek; also, in
the fourteenth century, by a Greek monk named Planudes. But do not suppose
they had their birth or flourished in Greece alone. At the very time that Aesop
was telling them at the court of Croesus, or in Delphi, Corinth, or Athens,—far,
far away in India the Buddhist priests were telling fables in the Sanskrit
language to the common people, the blind, the ignorant and the outcast. Sanskrit,
you know, is the eldest brother of all the family of languages to which our
English belongs. When the Buddhist religion declined, the Brahmins took up the
priceless inheritance of fable and used it for educational purposes. Their ancient
Indian sages and philosophers compiled a treatise for the education of princes
which was supposed to contain a system of good counsel for right training in all
the chief affairs of life. In it they inserted the choicest treasures of their wisdom
and the best rules for governing a people, and the Rajahs kept the book with
great secrecy and care. Then a Persian king heard of its existence and sent a
learned physician to India, where he spent several years in copying and
translating the precious manuscript, finally bringing it hack to the court, where
he declined to accept all reward but a dress of honour. In much the same way it