A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

(Αἴσωπος), a writer of Fables, a species of composition which has been defined " analogical narratives, intended to convey some moral lesson, in which irrational animals or objects are introduced as speaking." (Philolog. Museum, i. p. 280.) Of his works none are extant, and of his life scarcely anything is known. He appears to have lived about B. C. 570, for Herodotus (2.134) mentions a woman named Rhodopis as a fellowslave of Aesop's, and says that she lived in the time of Arnasis king of Egypt, who began to reign B. C. 569. Plutarch makes him contemporary with Solon (Sept. Sap. Conv. p. 152c.), and Laertius (1.72) says, that he flourished about the 52th Olympiad. The only apparent authority against this date is that of Suidas (s. v. Αἴσωπος); but the passage is plainly corrupt, and if we adopt the correction of Clinton, it gives about B. C. 620 for the date of his birth; his death is placed B. C. 564, but may have occurred a little later. (See Clinton, Fast. Hell. vol. i. pp. 213, 237, 239.)

Suidas tells us that Samos, Sardis, Mesembria in Thrace, and Cotiœum in Phrygia dispute the honour of having given him birth. We are told that he was originally a slave, and the reason of his first writing fables is given by Phaedrus. (iii.

Prolog. 33, &c.) Among his masters were two Samians, Xanthus and Iadmon, from the latter of whom he received his freedom. Upon this he visited Croesus (where we are told that he reproved Solon for discourtesy to the king), and afterwards Peisistratus at Athens. Plutarch (de sera Num. Vind. p. 556) tells us, that he was sent to Delphi by Croesus, to distribute among the citizens four minae a piece. But in consequence of some dispute arising on the subject, he refused to give any money at all, upon which the enraged Delphians threw him from a precipice. Plagues were sent upon them from the gods for the offence, and they proclaimed their willingness to give a compensation for his death to any one who could claim it. At length Iadmon, the grandson of his old master, received the compensation, since no nearer connexion could be found. (Hdt. 2.134.)

There seems no reason to doubt this story about the compensation, and we have now stated all the circumstances of Aesop's life which rest on any authority. But there are a vast variety of anecdotes and adventures in which he bears the principal part, in a life of him prefixed to a book of Fables purporting to be his, and collected by Maximus Planudes, a monk of the 14th century. This life represents Aesop as a perfect monster of ugliness and deformity; a notion for which there is no authority whatever. For he is mentioned in passages of classical authors, where an allusion to such personal peculiarities would have been most natural, without the slightest trace of any such allusion. He appears for instance in Plutarch's Convivium, where though there are many jokes on his former condition as a slave, there are none on his appearance, and we need not imagine that the ancients would be restrained from such jokes by any feelings of delicacy, since the nose of Socrates furnishes ample matter for raillery in the Symposium of Plato. Besides, the Athenians caused Lysippus to erect a statue in his honour, which had it been sculptured in accordance with the above description, would have been the reverse of ornamental.

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