,
which have been familiar to us from our nursery days, are mostly
spurious, and have been traced to ancient Oriental sources. The
so-called Esopic apologue of the Lion and the House is found in an
Egyptian papyrus preserved at Leyden.[128] Many of them are quite modern
_rechauffes_ of Hindu apologues, such as the Milkmaid and her Pot of
Milk, which gave rise to our popular saying, "Don't count your chickens
until they be hatched." Nevertheless, genuine fables of Esop were
current in Athens at the best period of its literary history, though it
does not appear that they existed in writing during his lifetime.
Aristophanes represents a character in one of his plays as learning
Esop's fables from oral recitation. When first reduced to writing they
were in prose, and Socrates is said to have turned some of them into
verse, his example being followed by Babrius, amongst others, of whose
version but few fables remain entire. The most celebrated of his Latin
translators is Phaedrus, who takes care to inform us that

If any thoughts in these Iambics shine,
The invention's Esop's, and the verse is mine.[129]

[127] The reader may with advantage consult the article
'Beast-Fable,' by Mr. Thos. Davidson, in _Chambers's
Encylopaedia_, new edition.

[128] But this papyrus might be of as late a period as the
second century of our era.

[129] For the most complete history of the Esopic Fable, see
vol. i of Mr. Joseph Jacobs' edition of _The Fables of
Aesop, as first printed by Caxton in 1484, with those of
Avian, Alfonso, and Poggio_, recently published by Mr.
David Nutt; where a vast amount of erudite information
will be found on the subject in all its ramifications.
Mr. Jacobs, indeed, seems to have left little for future
gleaners: he has done his work in a thorough,
Benfey-like manner, and students of comparative
folk-lore are under great obligations to him for the
indefatigable industry he has devoted to the valuable
outcome of his wide-reaching learning.

Little is authentically known regarding the career of the renowned
fabulist, who is supposed to have been born about B.C. 620, and, as in
the case of Homer, various places are assigned as that of his
nativity--Samos, Sardis, Mesembria in Thrace, and Cotiaeium in Phrygia.
He is said to have been brought as a slave to Athens when very young,
and after se