Ἐρέω τιν' ὑμῖν αἶνον, ὦ Κηρυκίδη, πίθηκος ᾔει θηρίων ἀποκριθεὶς μοῦνος ἀν ̓ ἐσχατίην· τῷ δ ̓ ἄρ ̓ ἀλώπηξ κερδαλῆ συνήντετο, πυκνὸν ἔχουσα νόον. Fragm. xxxix. Ibid. 308. The most celebrated fabulist of antiquity was undoubtedly Æsop: whose age, however, if he was contemporary with Croesus, king of Lydia, about the middle of the sixth century before Christ, was later than that of Archilochus. The collection of fables which have descended to posterity under his name, it has long since been shewn by Bentley, and by others of the learned, are most of them much later than his time; and the work either of the monk Planudes, as it is thought, or of fabulists before his time, but much more recent than Esop; especially of Babrias. It is very possible, however, that in this collection many have been incorporated, traditionally ascribed to Asop; though others there are, also ascribed to Æsop, which do not appear in it. Maximus Tyrius, at the beginning of the second century after Christ, thus describes the collection of fables attributed to Æsop, in his time; a description which applies in general to those also, that still go by his name. Αἰσώπῳ τῷ Φρυγὶ πεποίηνται διάλογοί τε θηρίων καὶ ξυνουσίαι· διαλέγεται δὲ αὐτῷ καὶ τὰ δένδρα, καὶ οἱ ἰχθύες, ἄλλο ἄλλῳ, καὶ ἀνθρώποις ἀναμίξ· καταμέμικται δὲ ἐν τοῖς λόγοις τούτοις νοῦς βραχὺς, αινιττόμενός τι τῶν ἀληθῶν We find Aristotle also referring to the uülor Αἰσώπειοι, in his Rhetorica ", as to compositions or a Dissert. iii. 1. b Lib. ii. xx. 2. collections well known in his time". Along with these he mentions the μῦθοι Λιβυκοί, as collections or productions of the same kind. They are joined with the fables of Æsop by Quinctilian also . Dio Chrysostom has an oration, entitled μulos A.Bukós; from which it appears that such a title might stand for any sort of fairy tale, or legend. But Suidas has preserved an extract from the Myrmidones of Eschylus, in which the μῦθοι Λιβυστικοὶ are quoted by name; and shewn to have properly consisted of fables. ὁ δ' (leg. ὡς δ ̓ ἐστι μύθων τῶν Λιβυστικῶν λόγος, εἰπεῖν, ἰδόντα μηχανὴν πτερώματος, τάδ ̓ οὐχ ὑπ ̓ ἄλλων, ἀλλὰ τοῖς αὐτῶν πτέροις Once on a time, as tales of Libya tell, In fact, a variety of ancient authorities either quote them, or recognize their existence, Aristophanes, Plato, &c. Socrates, we are told in the Phædo, put some of them, if not all, into verse, during his confinement in prison, between his condemnation and his death. Besides the Αισώπειοι and the Λιβυστικοί μύθοι, mention is sometimes made in the writers of antiquity, of the Eußaριτικοί, Φρύγιοι, Κιλίκιοι, Καρικοὶ, Αἰγύπτιοι, and Κύπριοι μῦθοι ; and besides Hesiod, Homer, or Archilochus, the earliest authors of such compositions, the names of Connis, Cilix, Thurus of Sybaris, Cibyssus of Libya, occur also, as more ancient than Æsop. A kind of distinction is drawn too between these several species of the same genus of compositions; the μvo Evẞapirikoì, are so called as made up of the agency of rational animals only; the Λύδιοι, Φρύγιοι, and Λιβυκοὶ, of that of irrational only ; the μύθοι Alowmeio, of that of both promiscuously. d v. xi. 20. e i. 188. Orat. v. "Then mine own arms," he cried, "my fall have wrought"Whose wings pursued me, and whose wings have caught. Seneca, in his Consolatio ad Polybium, speaks of fables and apologues as a kind of writing, upon which his countrymen, the Romans, had hitherto not exerted their genius. Non audeo te usque eo producere, ut fabellas quoque et Æsopeos logos, intentatum Romanis ingeniis opus, solita tibi venustate connectas f. Yet the very thing, which he thus thought it scarcely worth while to recommend to Polybius, had been successfully executed by one Roman writer before the time of Seneca, or contemporary with him; viz. Phædrus; if at least, Phædrus was a freedman of Tiberius Cæsar. Some of the learned, however, assign to him a much later date; whose opinions, no doubt, will be considered to derive support from this passage of Seneca. Yet that Seneca did not exactly remember the real state of the case, at the time, so far as regarded the cultivation of the fable for moral and didactic purposes, before his time; or that he thought proper to disguise his knowledge of it, for the sake of complimenting Polybius the more agreeably, appears from the fact that two or three fables occur in Horace, as fine and as instructive as any that antiquity has transmitted to us. Excellentissimum est docendi genus exemplorum traditio, observes M. Terentius Varro, in one of his fragments; and examples, as Aristotle tells us 8, may be fictitious, as well as real, and serve all the purposes of the example just the same. Illæ quo f Cap. 27, 1. Rhet. ii. xx. 2. que fabellæ, says Quinctilian 1, quæ, etiamsi originem non ab Æsopo acceperunt (nam videtur earum primus auctor Hesiodus) nomine tamen Æsopi maxime celebrantur, ducere animos solent, præcipue rusticorum, et imperitorum: qui et simplicius, quæ facta sunt, audiunt, et capti voluptate facile iis, quibus delectantur, consentiunt. An ingenious, philosophical imagination, observes Aristotle, which can readily discern resemblances between things otherwise the most distinct, may multiply fables to any extent, all possessing some moral use and application. But there are many instances to be met with in history, in which we find the fable or apologue, simple as it may appear, and calculated for times of very little intellectual refinement, applied with great effect upon serious practical questions; resorted to by the orators and statesmen of antiquity, at very cultivated periods of Greek or Roman history; and recognized so far not as a mere exercise of the imagination, nor as an amusement of the school, the σχολή, διδασκαλεῖον, or auditorium, but as one of the most convincing and popular modes of influencing the deliberations of a public body. Some specimens of the use of fables, for real practical purposes, among those which may be gleaned from the historians or other writers of antiquity, I will take the liberty of subjoining. The oldest example of a fable, properly so called, known to the critics of former times, was that of Hesiod, before alluded to; and to him, consequently, it was very natural they should attribute the germ h v. xi. 19. i Rhet. ii. xx. 7. of the invention, afterwards brought to perfection by Æsop. Every reader of his Bible, however, is aware of the existence of two apologues, much more ancient than the time of Hesiod; viz. the fable of Jotham, the son of Gideon, addressed by him, B. C. 1250, to the men of Shechem k; and Nathan's parable, or fable, addressed to David', B. C. 1032, or 1033. These two apologues are, strictly speaking, the most ancient we are acquainted with; and as every reader of taste, who has a proper relish for simple and natural eloquence, will at once allow— they are not only the most ancient, but among the most beautiful that we know of. There is another exquisite specimen of the same kind, in the answer of Joash king of Israel, to Amaziah king of Judah m, about B. C. 822: and consequently, though later than the time of Hesiod, yet much older than that of Archilochus. There is a parable or fable, also, in the 2nd of Esdras ", which is prettily conceived and expressed : though this work, as I shall have occasion to shew hereafter, is later even than the Christian era. And these, I think, are all the apologues or parables, to be met with in scripture, in any part of it, canonical or apocryphal, except the New Testament. Herodotus records a fable", which he attributes to Cyrus, king of Persia, about B. C. 548, in his answer to the Ionian Greeks; who had come to tender him, of their own accord, after the reduction k Judges, ix. 7—21. xiv. 9. 1 2 Sam. xii. 1—7. m 2 Kings, n Chap. iv. 13-17. of the Vulgate; ii. 24-27 o Lib. i. 141. of Dr. Laurence's Version of the Ethiopic. |