FLOURISHED ABOUT B. C. 560. 



THE use of the allegory or fable, as a means of instruction, appears 

 to have been one of the earliest dictates of enlightened reason ; and 

 has been resorted to, in a greater or less degree, by the moralists and 

 philosophers of all ages and countries. Hence it is, that throughout 

 the classical historians we meet so often with the name of Jsop, 

 perpetuated for no other reason than that he was the most famous of 

 ancient fabulists ; or, as some writers have alleged, the very inventor 

 of this mode of instruction. His life is totally unconnected with any 

 public events of importance; his family were utterly obscure; no 

 kingdoms were conquered by him, or settled in legislation; on the 

 contrary, human nature appears in complete degradation in his person 

 and circumstances : in condition a slave, and deformed, it is said, in 

 person, even to the excitement of disgust in those who beheld him, 

 he yet sustains a high rank amongst the sages of ancient times, and 

 certainly more for his method of teaching than for anything extraor- 

 dinary which he communicates. Indeed, what were his particular 

 sentiments as a philosopher can now be very faintly traced : his fables, 

 in which all his precepts appear to have been conveyed, are con- 

 siderably mutilated ; and the majority of those which bear his name 

 are the fabrication of a later period. In those which can with any 

 degree of certainty be traced to Jsop as their author, his exact mean- 

 ing is not always obvious ; and the occasion of their composition, 

 which must have given a much greater propriety to their application, 

 is, for the most part, unknown. The celebrity of JEsop is, perhaps, 

 still more remarkable, as it appears to have been originally uncon- 

 nected with any recommendation from the form of his compositions, 

 or the mode of publishing them : they were not adorned by the graces 

 of poetry, nor do they appear to have been delivered with eloquence. 

 Their novelty, their liveliness, and their strict analogy to real life, 

 appear to have been their only attraction; features of the genuine 

 fable which, under every form of its development, are a tribute to the 

 imperishable charms of truth. 



Several countries dispute the honour of giving birth to ^Esop : he Uncertainty 

 is sometimes called a Thracian, and by other writers a Samian ; but J r f y !" s coun " 

 the more commonly-received opinion is, that he was born in the town 

 of Ammonius, in the Greater Phrygia. Perhaps these indications of 

 the uncertainty, serve only to prove the meanness of his origin : of 



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