ynas
himself. And there were scholars who accounted the manuscript
as genuine.

The discovery of the first part added substantially to the remains which
we have of the poetry of ancient Greece. The terseness, simplicity, and
humor of the poems belong to the popular classic all the world over, in
whatever tongue it appears; and the purity of the Greek shows that
Babrius lived at a time when the influence of the classical age was
still vital. He is placed at various times. Bergk fixes him so far back
as B.C. 250, while others place him at the same number of years in our
own era. Both French and German criticism has claimed that he was a
Roman. There is no trace of his fables earlier than the Emperor Julian,
and no metrical version of the Aesopean fables existed before the
writing of Babrius. Socrates tried his hand at a version or two. But
when such Greek writers as Xenophon and Aristotle refer to old
folk-tales and legends, it is always in their own words. His fables are
written in choliambic verse; that is, imperfect iambic which has a
spondee in the last foot and is fitted for the satire for which it was
originally used.

The fables of Babrius have been edited, with an interesting and valuable
introduction, by W.G. Rutherford (1883), and by F.G. Schneidewin (1880).
They have been turned into English metre by James Davies, M.A. (1860).
The reader is also referred to the article 'Aesop' in the present work.

THE NORTH WIND AND THE SUN

Betwixt the North wind and the Sun arose
A contest, which would soonest of his clothes
Strip a wayfaring clown, so runs the tale.
First, Boreas blows an almost Thracian gale,
Thinking, perforce, to steal the man's capote:
He loosed it not; but as the cold wind smote
More sharply, tighter round him drew the folds,
And sheltered by a crag his station holds.
But now the Sun at first peered gently forth,
And thawed the chills of the uncanny North;
Then in their turn his beams more amply plied,
Till sudden heat the clown's endurance tried;
Stripping himself, away his cloak he flung:
The Sun from Boreas thus a triumph wrung.

The fable means, "My son, at mildness aim:
Persuasion more results than force may claim."

JUPITER AND THE MONKEY

A baby-show with prizes Jove decreed
For all the beasts, and gave the choice due heed.
A monkey-mother came among the rest;
A naked,