SHORT HISTORY OF THE ^ESOPIC FABLE xix 



standard iEsop of medieval Christendom. The same history 

 applies in large measure to the Fables of Avian, which were 

 done into prose, transferred back into Latin verse, and sent 

 forth through Europe from England. 



Meanwhile Babrius had been suffering the same fate as 

 Phaedrus. His scazons were turned into poor Greek prose, 

 and selections of them pass to this day as the original Fables 

 of iEsop. Some fifty of these were selected, and with the 

 addition of a dozen Oriental fables, were attributed to an 

 imaginary Persian sage, Syntipas ; this collection was trans- 

 lated into Syriac, and thence into Arabic, where they passed 

 under the name of the legendary Loqman (probably a doublet 

 of Balaam). A still larger collection of the Greek prose 

 versions got into Arabic, where it was enriched by some 60 

 fables from the Arabic Bidpai and other sources, but still 

 passed under the name of iEsop. This collection, containing 

 164 fables, was brought to England after the Third Crusade 

 of Richard I., and translated into Latin by an Englishman 

 named Alfred, with the aid of an Oxford Jew named 

 Berachyah ha-Nakdan (" Benedictus le Puncteur v in the 

 English Records), who, on his own account, translated a 

 number of the fables into Hebrew rhymed prose, under the 

 Talmudic title Mishle Shu c alim (Fox Fables). 1 Part of 

 Alfred's iEsop was translated into English alliterative verse, 

 and this again was translated about 1200 into French by 

 Marie de France, who attributed the new fables to King 

 Alfred. After her no important addition was made to the 

 medieval iEsop." 



1 I have given specimens of his Fables in my Jews of Angevin England, 

 pp. 165-173, 278-281. 



