stories
that are told about him gain some credence for this theory, which is set
forth in detail by the Italian scholar Vico, who says:--"Aesop, regarded
philosophically, will be found not to have been an actually existing
man, but rather an abstraction representing a class,"--in other words,
merely a convenient invention of the later Greeks, who ascribed to him
all the fables of which they could find no certain author.

[Illustration: Aesop]

The only narrative upon which the ancient writers are in the main agreed
represents Aesop as living in the seventh century before Christ. As with
Homer, so with Aesop, several cities of Asia Minor claimed the honor of
having been his birthplace. Born a slave and hideously ugly, his keen
wit led his admiring master to set him free; after which he traveled,
visiting Athens, where he is said to have told his fable of King Log and
King Stork to the citizens who were complaining of the rule of
Pisistratus. Still later, having won the favor of King Croesus of
Lydia, he was sent by him to Delphi with a gift of money for the
citizens of that place; but in the course of a dispute as to its
distribution, he was slain by the Delphians, who threw him over a
precipice.

The fables that bore his name seem not to have been committed by him to
writing, but for a long time were handed down from generation to
generation by oral tradition; so that the same fables are sometimes
found quoted in slightly different forms, and we hear of men learning
them in conversation rather than from books. They were, however,
universally popular. Socrates while in prison amused himself by turning
some of them into verse. Aristophanes cites them in his plays; and he
tells how certain suitors once tried to win favor of a judge by
repeating to him some of the amusing stories of Aesop. The Athenians
even erected a statue in his honor. At a later period, the fables were
gathered together and published by the Athenian statesman and orator,
Demetrius Phalereus, in B.C. 320, and were versified by Babrius (of
uncertain date), whose collection is the only one in Greek of which any
substantial portion still survives. They were often translated by the
Romans, and the Latin version by Phaedrus, the freedman of Augustus
Caesar, is still preserved and still used as a school-book. Forty-two of
them are likewise found in a Latin work by one Avianus, dating from the
fifth century after Christ. During the Middle Ages, when much of