Aesop: Aesop's Fables

314. LIFE OF AESOP (continued)

Aesopo ingentem statuam posuere Attici,
 Servumque collocarunt aeterna in basi:  
 Patere honoris scirent ut cuncti viam; 
 Nec generi tribui sed virtuti gloriam.

These few facts are all that can be relied on with any degree of certainty, in reference to the birth, life, and death of Aesop. They were first brought to light, after a patient search and diligent perusal of ancient authors, by a Frenchman, M. Claude Gaspard Bachet de Mezeriac, who declined the honor of being tutor to Louis XIII of France, from his desire to devote himself exclusively to literature. He published his Life of Aesop, Anno Domini 1632. The later investigations of a host of English and German scholars have added very little to the facts given by M. Mezeriac. The substantial truth of his statements has been confirmed by later criticism and inquiry. It remains to state, that prior to this publication of M. Mezeriac, the life of Aesop was from the pen of Maximus Planudes, a monk of Constantinople, who was sent on an embassy to Venice by the Byzantine Emperor Andronicus the elder, and who wrote in the early part of the fourteenth century. His life was prefixed to all the early editions of these fables, and was republished as late as 1727 by Archdeacon Croxall as the introduction to his edition of Aesop. This life by Planudes contains, however, so small an amount of truth, and is so full of absurd pictures of the grotesque deformity of Aesop, of wondrous apocryphal stories, of lying legends, and gross anachronisms, that it is now universally condemned as false, puerile, and unauthentic. l It is given up in the present day, by general consent, as unworthy of the slightest credit. G.F.T.

1 M. Bayle thus characterises this Life of Aesop by Planudes, "Tous les habiles gens conviennent que c'est un roman, et que les absurdites grossieres qui l'on y trouve le rendent indigne de toute."

THE END