xiv. INTRODUCTIONS 



they carried him back to the city, and notwithstanding 

 his imprecating upon them the vengeance of heaven, 

 they immediately condemned him to be cast from the 

 rock of Hypania, as the punishment of the pretended 

 crime. Ancient historians say, that for this wickedness, 

 the Delphians were for a long time visited with pestilence 

 and famine, until an expiation was made, and then the 

 plague ceased. 



It was not until many ages after the death of .F^sop, that 

 his most prominent successor, Phredrus, arose. He trans- 

 lated yFsop's Fables from the Greek into Latin, and added 

 to them many of his own. Of Phaeadrus little is known, 

 except from his works. He is said to have lived in the 

 times of the Emperors Augustus and Tiberius, and to have 

 died in the reign of the latter. The first printed edition of 

 his Fables, with cuts, was published at Guada, in 1482. 

 Caxton published some of them in 1484, and Bonus 

 Accursius in 1489, to which he prefixed Planudes's Life of 

 . Fsop. Hut the most perfect edition of Phaedrus's Works 

 was published in five volumes, by Peter Pithou, at Troyes, 

 in 1596, from manuscripts discovered by him in the cities 

 of Rheims and Dijon. To these have succeeded in later 

 .times, a numerous list of Fabulists,* besides such of the 

 poets as have occasionally interspersed Fables in their 

 works. These, in their day, have had, and many of them 

 still have, their several admirers; but Gav and Dodsley best 



* Sir Roger L'Estrange, born 1616, died 1704. 



John de la Fontaine, born' 1621, died 1695. 



John Dryden, born 1631, died 1701. 



Antoine Houdart de la Motte, born 1672, died 1731. 



John Gay, born 1688, died 1732. 



Samuel Croxall, D. D. Archdeacon of Hereford, died 1752. 



Edward Moore, died 1757. 



Draper. 



Robert Dodsley, born 1703, died 1764. 



William Wilkie, born 1721, died 1772. 



Abbe Brotier, born 1722, died 1789. 



