xvi ^ESOP'S FABLES 



in a few lines of Herodotus : that he flourished 550 B.C.; 

 was killed in accordance with a Delphian oracle ; and that 

 wergild was claimed for him by the grandson of his master, 

 Iadmon. When free speech was established in the Greek 

 democracies, the custom of using Fables in harangues was 

 continued and encouraged by the rhetoricians, while the 

 mirth-producing qualities of the Fable caused it to be 

 regarded as fit subject of after-dinner conversation along 

 with other jests of a broader kind (" Milesian," " Sybaritic "). 

 This habit of regarding the Fable as a form of the Jest 

 intensified the tendency to connect it with a well-known 

 name as in the case of our Joe Miller. About 300 B.C. 

 Demetrius Phalereus, whilom tyrant of Athens and founder 

 of the Alexandria Library, collected together all the Fables 

 he could find under the title of Assemblies of Msopic Tales 

 (Aoywi/ Alo-wireLQiv (rvvaywyai). This collection, running 

 probably to some 200 Fables, after being interpolated and 

 edited by the Alexandrine grammarians, was turned into 

 neat Latin iambics by Phaedrus, a Greek freedman of 

 Augustus in the early years of the Christian era. As the 

 modern iEsop is mainly derived from Phaedrus, the answer 

 to the question " Who wrote JEsop ? " is simple : " Deme- 

 trius of Phaleron." x 



In India the great ethical reformer, Sakyamuni, the 

 Buddha, initiated (or adopted from the Brahmins) the habit of 

 using the Beast-Tale for moral purposes, or, in other words, 

 transformed it into the Fable proper. A collection of these 

 seems to have existed previously and independently, in which 



1 For this statement and what follows a reference to the Pedigree of the 

 Fables on p. 196 will be found useful. 



