el I think
the finest and that which pleases the most universally is
fable, in whatever shape it appears."

JOSEPH ADDISON

How shall I bring to your mind the time and
distance that separate us from the Age of
Fable? Think of what seemed to you the
longest week of your life. Think of fifty-two of
these in a year; then think of two thousand five
hundred years and try to realize that Aesop--sometimes
called the Eighth Wise Man--lived
twenty-five centuries ago and made these wonderful
tales that delight us to-day.

Shakespeare is even yet something of a mystery,
although he was born in our own era, less than
five hundred years ago; but men are still trying
to discover any new facts of his life that might
better explain his genius. A greater mystery
is grand old Homer, who has puzzled the world
for centuries. Scholars are not certain whether
the "Iliad" or "Odyssey" are the work of one
or more than one mind. Who can say? for the
thrilling tales were told--probably after the
fashion of all the minstrels of his day--more than
eight hundred years before Christ.

On the background of that dim distant long ago,
perhaps two hundred years later than Homer,
looms the magnificent figure of another mysterious
being--Aesop the Greek slave.

Wherever and whenever he lived, and whether,
in fact, he ever lived at all, he seems very real to
us, even though more than two thousand years have
passed. Among all the stories that scholars and
historians have told of him--sifting through the
centuries the true from the false--we get a vivid
picture of the man. 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