JESOP. 11 



his objects, his disappointment at the barbarous manners of the people, 

 and at the oracle itself ; his consequent sarcasms, and his death, are 

 uniformly related. On his arrival at Delphi, then a place held sacred 

 throughout Greece, he found the inhabitants, whom he had expected 

 to see deserving of the reputation they had acquired for piety, wisdom, 

 and learning, deeply immersed in pride, avarice, and barbarism. 

 Unfortunately for himself, he did not conceal his sentiments concern- 

 ing them, but allowed his contempt and aversion to become publicly 

 apparent, although clothed in his usual allegory. " I find," said he, 

 " the curiosity that brought me hither to be exactly similar to the 

 expectation of those who, whilst standing on the shore, see something 

 at a distance which the wind and the waves are floating towards them ; 

 they imagine it to be of considerable bulk or value; but upon its 

 approaching nearer, they discover it at last to be nothing more than a 

 heap of floating sticks, weeds, and rubbish." This censure, it should 

 seem, was levelled not at the lower class of the Delphian people only, 

 but likewise at the magistracy, and perhaps at the juggles of the 

 famous oracle itself; the cheats and extortions attendant upon which 

 cannot be supposed altogether to have escaped the penetrating intellect 

 of jEsop. 



Jealous of their reputation, and well knowing the credit with which 

 the fabulist was received by princes and states of the first importance, 

 and those by whom the Delphian oracle was, until then, highly 

 reverenced, the magistracy of the city, and perhaps the priests of the 

 temple, resolved to silence the censures of JEsop by depriving him of 

 life. It was necessary, however, that he should appear to the public 

 eye to deserve the ignominious death they meant to inflict on him, and 

 the philosophic traveller had already quitted Delphi to depart, when 

 he was seized only a few miles from the town, on a charge of sacrilege. 

 jEsop at first ridiculed the accusation ; but the conspirators had laid 

 their plot too sure. They had secreted amongst his baggage, for no 

 benevolent design, a golden cup which belonged to the temple, and 

 there, on inspection, it was found. This apparent proof of ^Esop's 

 guilt was not exhibited to the people in vain: they were much 

 enraged ; and the court at which he was afterwards regularly tried, 

 condemned him to be thrown headlong from a rock. -ZEsop, to whom 

 kings, states, and cities of the greatest celebrity had listened with 

 admiration, could now with considerable difficulty obtain a hearing for 

 the few words in which he endeavoured to expose the artifice under 

 which his character was for the first time impeached. But in vain : 

 he was hurried to execution. On the road, however, he is said to 

 have succeeded in diverting their attention for awhile from its imme- 

 diate object; and, evading those who held him, to have escaped to a 

 neighbouring altar. From hence, however, he was dragged, with the 

 remark, that those who robbed their sanctuaries were not entitled to 

 protection from them ; when he made another and final attempt to 

 move their compassion or awaken their justice, in the fable of the 



