f Greek poets, in much obscurity. Sardis, the capital of Lydia;
Samos, a Greek island; Mesembria, an ancient colony in Thrace; and
Cotiaeum, the chief city of a province of Phrygia, contend for the
distinction of being the birthplace of Aesop. Although the honor thus
claimed cannot be definitely assigned to any one of these places,
yet there are a few incidents now generally accepted by scholars as
established facts, relating to the birth, life, and death of Aesop. He
is, by an almost universal consent, allowed to have been born about the
year 620 B.C., and to have been by birth a slave. He was owned by two
masters in succession, both inhabitants of Samos, Xanthus and Jadmon,
the latter of whom gave him his liberty as a reward for his learning
and wit. One of the privileges of a freedman in the ancient republics of
Greece, was the permission to take an active interest in public affairs;
and Aesop, like the philosophers Phaedo, Menippus, and Epictetus, in
later times, raised himself from the indignity of a servile condition
to a position of high renown. In his desire alike to instruct and to be
instructed, he travelled through many countries, and among others came
to Sardis, the capital of the famous king of Lydia, the great patron, in
that day, of learning and of learned men. He met at the court of Croesus
with Solon, Thales, and other sages, and is related so to have pleased
his royal master, by the part he took in the conversations held with
these philosophers, that he applied to him an expression which has since
passed into a proverb, "The Phrygian has spoken better than all."

On the invitation of Croesus he fixed his residence at Sardis, and was
employed by that monarch in various difficult and delicate affairs of
State. In his discharge of these commissions he visited the different
petty republics of Greece. At one time he is found in Corinth, and at
another in Athens, endeavouring, by the narration of some of his
wise fables, to reconcile the inhabitants of those cities to the
administration of their respective rulers Periander and Pisistratus. One
of these ambassadorial missions, undertaken at the command of Croesus,
was the occasion of his death. Having been sent to Delphi with a large
sum of gold for distribution among the citizens, he was so provoked at
their covetousness that he refused to divide the money, and sent it back
to his master. The Delphians, enraged at this treatment, accused him of
impiety, and,