Aesop |
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THE INFLUENCE OF AESOP on Western thought and morals is profound. Plato, Socrates, Aristophanes, Aristotle, Solon, Cicero, Julius Caesar, Caxton, Shakespeare, La Fontaine, and the other great thinkers found inspiration in his words of wisdom. Socrates spent his last days putting his fables into verse. The books that have been written about him and his works would fill an immense library. His writings have been translated into almost every language of the civilized world. According to some writers, he is supposed to have been Lokman, another Negro slave, who was the wisest man of the East, and who was used as an authority by Mohammed in the Koran. But the manner of his death, as told by the Greeks, gives so living a touch to Aesop that it is not difficult to believe he was distinct from Lokman. Of Aesop's early life nothing definite is known. He lived in the sixth century B.C. According to Planudes the Great, a monk of the fourteenth century to whom we are indebted for Aesop's life and fables in its present form, he was a native of Phrygia, in Asia Minor, and a Negro slave, "flat-nosed . . . with lips, thick and pendulous and a black skin from which he contracted his name (Esop being the same with Ethiop)." Camerarius, Osborn, Baudoin, Bellegarde, and almost every writer agrees with Planudes. Aesop's first master was Xanthus, who saw him in a market where he was for sale with two other slaves, a musician and an orator. Xanthus asked the musician what he could do. He replied, "Anything." The orator, to the same question, replied, "Everything." Turning next to Aesop, Xanthus asked, "And what can you do? .... Nothing," was the reply. "Nothing!" repeated Xanthus, at which Aesop replied, "One of my companions says he can do anything and the other asserts that he can do everything. That leaves me nothing." Struck by the reply, Xanthus said, "If I buy you, will you promise to be good and honest?" "I'll be that whether you buy me or not," retorted Aesop. "Will you promise not to run away?" "Did you ever hear a bird in a cage tell his master that he intended making his escape?" demanded Aesop. Xanthus, pleased at Aesop's wit, was strongly tempted to buy him, but hesitated because of his black and ungainly form. He said, "That unlucky shape of yours will set people hooting and gaping at us wherever we go." "A philosopher," replied Aesop calmly, "should value a man for his mind and not for his body." The purchase was made. Xanthus' wife made the same objection and chided her husband for having bought him, but Aesop's cleverness soon won her over too. A few days later Xanthus went on a journey accompanied by slaves to carry the luggage. When Aesop chose the heaviest load, the others laughed at him. That, however, contained the food, and grew lighter and lighter as the days went on until nothing was left. One-day Xanthus' gardener asked Xanthus why it was that weeds grew so much better than cultivated plants. Xanthus could find no better reply than to say that Providence had ordered it so, but Aesop said, "Nature is a mother to the weeds, but only a stepmother to the cultivated plants." One day, after a quarrel, Xanthus' wife left him. Aesop promised his master that he would have her back before many days. Going to the market he bought meat, fish, cake, flowers, wine, the best of everything. At each shop and to each acquaintance he said that the reason for the purchases was that his master was going to get married. The news soon reached the ears of the recalcitrant wife, who came running back. "Don't you ever flatter yourself with the hope of having another wife while I am alive," she screamed. To celebrate her return Xanthus decided to give a feast and invited the leading philosophers of Greece. Aesop was entrusted with its preparation. When the guests sat down to eat, however, each dish was found to be tongue of some sort. When Xanthus angrily demanded an explanation, Aesop replied with assumed naïveté "You ordered me to make the best provision that I could think of for the entertainment of these excellent persons. As the tongue is the key that leads to all knowledge, what could be more suitable than a feast of tongues for philosophers?" Xanthus, mollified by the laughter of his guests, said, "I invite you all to dine with me tomorrow. Since my slave seems set on contradictions, I am ordering him to prepare a feast of the worst. We shall see what that shall be." But again only tongue was served. To the angry Xanthus Aesop explained, "Was it not an evil tongue that caused a break in your family? Was it not a soft tongue that healed the breach? The tongue is at once the best and the worst entertainment." Aesop also had the better of an encounter with Croesus, King of Lydia, the richest man of antiquity. Croesus threatened war upon Samos if its inhabitants did not pay him tribute. They decided to submit, but finally asked Aesop's advice. He replied, "There are two ways before you: the way of liberty, which is narrow and rugged at the entrance but plainer and smoother the further you travel; the second is the way of servitude that seems easy at first but which is afterwards full of intolerable difficulties. You must choose." The Samians chose the first, which meant war. When Croesus learned that it was a few words from one man that had made the Samians change their mind, he was anxious to see the one who could so powerfully influence others and promised peace on condition that he be sent to him. The Samians urged Aesop to go. He agreed but told them the following fable: "There was a war between the wolves and the sheep. The latter, aided by the dogs, had the better of it. Finally the wolves agreed to make peace on condition that the dogs be sent to them. The sheep agreed. As for the rest of that story, you do not need to hear it, I am sure." The Samians now begged Aesop not to go but he went, feeling that he was able to protect himself. When Croesus saw him, he looked at him in scorn. "Is this ill-favored slave one to hinder me, the King of Lydia, from being the master of Samos?" he asked. But Aesop, bowing low in the Lydian manner, replied gently that he had come of his own free will, and told Croesus the following fable: "A boy hunting locusts had the fortune to take a grasshopper. Seeing that he was about to kill her, she pleaded for her life, saying, 'I have never done ill to anyone, having had it neither in my will nor in my power. Ail my business is my song. Will you be the better for my death?' The youth relented and he let the grasshopper go. "Your majesty has now that innocent creature before you. There is nothing I can pretend to but my voice, which I have ever employed, so far as I could, for the service of mankind." When Croesus, touched by his modesty, bade him ask for anything he wanted, Aesop asked that Samos be left in peace. With this bloodless victory attained, he returned in triumph to his countrymen. Croesus, however, made him promise to return to him, and Aesop kept his word. He spent several years in Lydia writing his fables. Aesop finally expressed a wish to travel and Croesus gave him a large sum of money and letters of introduction to the leading rulers of the East. He visited Greece, Babylon, Egypt, Asia, and at Corinth met the Seven Wise Men of Greece at a banquet given by Perimander in honor of the occasion. "The encounter was to the common satisfaction of the whole company; the entertainment philosophical and agreeable; among other discourses they had some controversy upon the subject of government. Aesop being for a monarchy; the rest for a commonwealth." Aesop was skilled in playing on the vanity of mankind. He realized that it was necessary to sugarcoat the truth, especially in dealing with the great. This won him success where others of higher prestige had failed. Once Solon, the great Athenian lawmaker, visited Croesus. The latter displayed his enormous wealth, hoping to impress Solon. But Solon, unmoved, said frankly that riches did not bring happiness, and that he knew several heroes who had suffered glorious death for their country whom he considered more fortunate than his very rich host. This frankness caused Solon's abrupt dismissal. When Aesop was shown this same treasure, he replied, "Croesus is to other men as the sea is to the rivers that flow into it." After this he then declared in his own way that he considered honor superior to riches. His sharp wit and ready tongue were, however, to be the cause of his death: When he visited Delphi, he was so disappointed at the place which had such a worldwide reputation for piety, learning, and wisdom that in an unguarded moment he told the following fable to some acquaintances: "Some persons standing at the seaside saw an object on the ocean coming toward them a great way off, which had all the appearances of being something of importance, but when it came close enough to be discernible they found it to be a great mass of weeds and rubbish. Such, I find, to be the curiosity that brought me to Delphi." When the remark came to the ears of the authorities they decided that Aesop should not leave alive. His opinion, if broadcast, would ruin Delphi, whose principal wealth came from its visitors. Accordingly, as soon as he had left the town they sent soldiers after him who accused him of stealing a sacred cup from the temple, which had been planted in his bag. Aesop readily permitted a search of his effects. The cup was found. Pronounced guilty of sacrilege, he was sentenced to be thrown from a precipice into the sea. He succeeded, however, in breaking away from the guard and fled into the temple where he took refuge. But he was wrenched away. Hoping to save his life, he told his captors fable after fable in vain. As a parting shot he told them the fable of the Asses: "An old man who had spent his whole life in the country without ever seeing the town decided that nothing would please him better than to see it before he died. His friends were too busy to take him, but they had some asses which knew the way to the town and decided to let the animals guide him there. "On the way a storm arose and in the darkness the beasts lost their way and tumbled with the old man into a deep pit where he said with his last breath, 'Miserable wretch that I am to be destroyed, since I must, among the basest of all animals, asses.'" The Delphians, whipped to fury, threw him from the cliff to his death. But they greatly regretted it later, for their action brought universal condemnation down upon them. Among the most noted sayings attributed to Aesop are the following: "The world is like a true play of wheels, turn by turn one mounts and one descends." "Prometheus, in making man, did not use water to mix the clay; he used tears." One of his most impressive fables is the following: A wolf, peeping through a window, saw a company of shepherds eating a joint of lamb. "Lord," he exclaimed, "what a fuss they would have raised had they caught me doing that." Another striking one is that of the fly who buzzed about a lion's nose, forcing the king of beasts to notice him; but even while he was gloating over his triumph, the fly fell into a spider's web. The most famous of all these fables--one that has profoundly influenced politics through the centuries--is that of the frogs who wanted a king. Finding life in their pond too quiet, these frogs prayed to Jupiter for a king. He threw them a log, which after the first splash, lay still. Finding this king not noisy and spectacular enough they leaped on him with contempt and again begged Jupiter for a ruler --a real one this time. He now sent them a stork, which made life very exciting because it began to eat them.
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