The Project Gutenberg EBook of Aesop's Fables, by Aesop

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Title: Aesop's Fables
A New Revised Version From Original Sources

Author: Aesop

Illustrator: Harrison Weir, John Tenniel and Ernest Griest

Release Date: July 1, 2006 [EBook #18732]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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AESOP'S FABLES

A NEW REVISED VERSION

FROM ORIGINAL SOURCES

[Illustration]

WITH UPWARDS OF 200 ILLUSTRATIONS

BY
HARRISON WEIR,[A] JOHN TENNIEL, ERNEST GRISET
AND OTHERS

NEW YORK
FRANK F. LOVELL & COMPANY
142 AND 144 WORTH STREET

[Illustration]

COPYRIGHT, 1884,
BY R. WORTHINGTON.

[Transcriber's note A: Original had "WIER".]

LIFE OF AESOP.

The Life and History of AEsop is involved, like that of Homer, the most
famous of 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