Epos

“ Nathan's Fable of the poor Man and his Lamb, is likewise more ancient than any that is extant, besides the above-mentioned, and had so good an effect, as to convey instruction to the ear of a king, without offending it, and [xii] to bring the man after God's own heart to a right sense of his guilt, and his duty. We find Æsop in the most distant ages of Greece. And, if we look into the very beginning of the commonwealth of Rome, we see a mutiny among the common people appeased by the Fable of the Belly and the Members [5] ”

“ ONCE UPON A TIME, when the Sun announced his intention to take a wife, the Frogs lifted up their voices in clamor to the sky. Jupiter, disturbed by the noise of their croaking, inquired the cause of their complaint. One of them said, “The Sun, now while he is single, parches up the marsh, and compels us to die miserably in our arid homes. What will be our future condition if he should beget other suns?”
LIFE OF AESOP
The Life and History of Æsop is involved, like that of Homer, the most famous of Greek poets, in much obscurity. Sardis, the capital of Lydia; Samos, a Greek island ”

“ The King of the Apes, hearing of their arrival, ordered them to be brought before him; and by way of impressing them with his magnificence, he received them sitting on a throne, while the Apes, his subjects, were ranged in long rows on either side of him. When the Travellers came into his presence he asked them what they thought of him as a King. The lying Traveller said, “Sire, every one must see that you are a most noble and mighty monarch.” “And what do you think of my subjects?” continued the King. “They,” said the Traveller, “are in every way worthy of their royal master.” ”

“ Selections from it passed into spelling and reading books, and made the Fables part of modern European folk-lore. [5]
We may conclude this history of Æsop with a similar account of the progress of Æsopic investigation. First came collection; the Greek Æsop was brought together by Neveletus in 1610, the Latin by Nilant in 1709. The main truth about the former was laid down by the masterhand of Bentley during a skirmish in the Battle of the Books; the equally great critic Lessing began to unravel the many knotty points connected with the medieval Latin Æsop. ”

“ The little girl grew day by day more beautiful, graceful and clever, and was soon an object of love and admiration to all who knew her. AEsop, the fable-writer, who was at that time also in bondage to Iadmon, took an especial pleasure in the growing amiability and talent of the child, taught her and cared for her in the same way as the tutors whom we keep to educate our Athenian boys. ”

“ The poet is purposely delaying the myths which are to form the real substance of the Ode, in order to introduce them at last with greater effect. And soon in one of his favourite bold transitions he reveals his scheme. "Quit such theme, tongue of mine!" he cries, and springs forthwith to the local legends of Opus,—the tale of Deucalion's deluge, and of the glorious reign of a mythical prince, to whom the Opuntian Locrians loved to trace the name of their city, Opus, the son of Zeus by a princess of Elis, who afterwards became the wife of the Locrian monarch Locrus. ”

“ Thus, in the thirty-sixth fable of Æsop, we read of an invalid who promises to the gods that he will sacrifice a hundred oxen to them in the event of a cure; when cured, as he does not possess a hundred oxen of flesh, he makes a hundred of paste, and burns them upon the hearth. ”

“ All living things awoke; the flowers opened their petals; the grain grew golden; the fruit grew ripe. Could but Epaphos see him now! Surely he must see him, and realise that not Apollo but Phaeton was guiding the horses of his father, driving the chariot of the Sun.
Quicker and yet more quick grew the pace of the white-maned steeds. Soon they left the morning breezes behind, and very soon they knew that these were not the hands of the god, their master, that held the golden reins. ”

“ Æsop is also mentioned as speaking in a public capacity to the Athenians, at the time when Pisistratus seized upon their liberties.F Upon each of these occasions he is represented as having introduced a Fable into his discourse, in a witty and pleasing manner. He was holden in the highest veneration and esteem in his day, by all men eminent for their wisdom and virtue. It appears there was scarcely an author among the ancient Greeks who mixed any thing of morality in his writings, that did not either quote or mention Æsop. ”

“ They took Thebes, put the king to death, and tied Dirce to the tail of a wild bull, which dragged her till she died. Bacchus changed her into a fountain, and deprived Antiope of the use of her senses. In this forlorn situation she wandered all over Greece, and at last found relief from Phocus son of Ornytion, who cured her of her disorder, and married her. Hyginus, fable 7, says that Antiope was divorced by Lycus, because she had been ravished by Epopeus, whom he calls Epaphus, and that after her repudiation she became pregnant by Jupiter. ”

“ This Fable I should have passed by in silence, if the Drones had not refused the proposed stipulation.III.33
Smart Fable XIV.
ÆSOP AT PLAY.
An Athenian seeing Æsop in a crowd of boys at play with nuts,III.34 stopped and laughed at him for a madman. As 403 soon as the Sage,—a laugher at others rather than one to be laughed at,—perceived this, he placed an unstrung bow in the middle of the road: “Hark you, wise man,” said he, “unriddle what I have done.” The people gather round. The man torments his invention a long time, but cannot make out the reason of the proposed question. ”

“ We read of Anopus Asopus, Oropus, Europus, Charopus, Ellopis, Ellopia; all nearly of the same purport, and named from the same object of worship. Europa was a [1153] Deity: and the name is a compound Eur-Ope, analogous to Canope, Canophis, and Cnuphis of Egypt; and signifies Orus Pytho. It is rendered by the Greeks as a feminine, upon a supposition, that it was the name of a woman; but it related properly to a country; and we find many places of the like etymology in Media, Syria, and Babylonia: which were expressed in the masculine Europos, and Oropus. The same also is observable in Greece. ”

“ There is one other yet to pass through the shed, who has as it were a hundred eyes, and until he has come and gone, your life is still in peril." At that moment the master himself entered, and having had to complain that his oxen had not been properly fed, he went up to their racks, and cried out: "Why is there such a scarcity of fodder? There is not half enough straw for them to lie on. Those lazy fellows have not even swept the cobwebs away." ”

“ With the invention of printing the European book of Æsop was compiled about 1480 by Heinrich Stainhöwel, who put together the Romulus with selections from Avian, some of the Greek prose versions of Babrius from Ranuzio’s translation, and a few from Alfred’s Æsop. To these he added the legendary life of Æsop and a selection of somewhat loose tales from Petrus Alphonsi and Poggio Bracciolini, corresponding to the Milesian and Sybaritic tales which were associated with the Fable in antiquity. ”

“ The Birds are about to charge the two Athenian intruders, when Epops, king of the Birds, formerly Tereus, king of Thrace, but long ago transformed into a hoopoe, intercedes in behalf of two men, {tes emes gunaikos onte suggene kai phuleta}, "who are of my lady's tribe and kin." ”

“ An epigram of Sophocles against Euripides contains an allusion to this fable (Athen. xiii. 82) . The fable is applied to the behaviour of wives by Plutarch: Conj. Praec. chap. xii. It is given by La Fontaine vi. 3, Lôqman (the Arabic Æsop) xxxiv., and Waldis' Esopus i. 89.
LXI.—HERCULES AND THE WAGGONER.
Avian 32. Babrius 20. Greek Æsop, ed. Halm, 81. Not included by Caxton in his Selections. "Put your shoulder to the wheel" obviously comes from this fable, and thus ultimately from Avian's line:
"Et manibus pigras disce juvare rotas." ”

“ But one Epaphos, a son of Zeus, sneered.
"'Thou a child of Helios!' he said; 'what folly! Thou canst show nothing wherewith to prove thy kinship, save thy fair face and thy yellow hair; and there are many maidens in Hellas who have those, and are as beautiful as thou. Manly grace and handsome features are indeed the gifts of the gods; but it is by godlike deeds alone that one can prove his kinship to the immortals. While Helios Hyperion--thy father, as thou wouldst have it--guides his chariot above the clouds, and showers blessings upon the earth, what dost thou do? ”

“ The lying Traveller replied, "You seem to me a most mighty king." "And what is your estimate of those you see around me?" "These," he made answer, "are worthy companions of yourself, fit at least to be ambassadors and leaders of armies." The Ape and all his court, gratified with the lie, commanded a handsome present to be given to the flatterer. On this the truthful Traveller thought within himself, "If so great a reward be given for a lie, with what gift may not I be rewarded, if, according to my custom, I shall tell the truth?" ”

“ He is, by an almost universal consent, allowed to have been born about the year 620 B.C., and to have been by birth a slave. He was owned by two masters in succession, both inhabitants of Samos, Xanthus and Jadmon, the latter of whom gave him his liberty as a reward for his learning and wit. One of the privileges of a freedman in the ancient republics of Greece, was the permission to take an active interest in public affairs; and Æsop, like the philosophers Phædo, Menippus, and Epictetus, in later times, raised himself from the indignity of a servile condition to a position of high renown. ”

“ Not in extant Phædrus, but must have been in the complete edition, as the medieval prose versions preserve some of the lines.
XI.—THE LION AND THE MOUSE (Ro. i. 18) .
From medieval prose Phædrus, which still retains a line or two of the original, but not now extant. Also certainly Indian in the form of "Elephant and Mouse," as elephants are often tied to trees as preliminary to taming them. The Greek form of the fable got into Egyptian literature about 200 A.D., when it occurs in a late Leyden papyrus. ”

“ Epops
Open the forest, [12] that I may go out!
Euelpides
By Heracles! what a creature! what plumage! What means this triple crest?
Epops
Who wants me?
Euelpides
The twelve great gods have used you ill, meseems.
Epops
Are you chaffing me about my feathers? I have been a man, strangers.
Euelpides
'Tis not you we are jeering at.
Epops
At what, then?
Euelpides
Why, 'tis your beak that looks so odd to us.
Epops
This is how Sophocles outrages me in his tragedies. Know, I once was Tereus. [13]
Euelpides
You were Tereus, and what are you now? a bird or a peacock? [14]
Epops
I am a bird. ”

“ But the Ass was as discontented as ever, for he had to work harder than before: so he begged Jupiter for relief a second time, and Jupiter very obligingly arranged that he should be sold to a Tanner. But when the Ass saw what his new master’s trade was, he cried in despair, “Why wasn’t I content to serve either of my former masters, hard as I had to work and badly as I was treated? for they would have buried me decently, but now I shall come in the end to the tanning-vat.”
Servants don’t know a good master till they have served a worse. ”

“ One of the Apes who had raised himself to be king, commanded them to be laid hold of, and brought before him, that he might know what was said of him among men. He ordered at the same time that all the Apes should be arranged in a long row on his right hand and on his left, and that a throne should be placed for him, as was the custom among men. ”

“ Beppo gazed about him in wonder. There were floors of colored marble, and ceilings of blue and gold, and columns of carved marble, and hangings of silk and velvet and silver.
Suddenly the tall man opened a little door that led into a dark passage, and Beppo followed him. They went along the passage, and then the man opened another door.
Then Beppo found himself in a great vaulted room. There at one end of the room were three souls. A man sat on the throne, and he was the king, for he had a crown on his head and a long robe over his shoulders. ”

“ Beppo came forward, and everybody stared. He came close to the king, and the king laid his hand upon his shoulder. Then he leaned over to Beppo and whispered in his ear: “A word, a word, only a few words; if they be spoken ill, they are ill; if they be spoken well, they are more precious than gold and jewels.” ”

“ In English, Give Dionysius the Gold you have found. Xanthus began to be afraid when he heard it was The Kings Mony, and Charged Æsop to make no Words on’t, and he should have the One Halfe. ’Tis well, says Æsop; but This is not so much your own Bounty yet, as The Intention of Him that Bury’d it; for the very same Letters direct the Dividing of it. As for Example once again Now. α stands for ἀνελόμενοι; β for βαδίσαντες; δ for διέλεσθε; ο for ὃν; ε for ἕυρετε; θ for θησαυρὸν; χ for χρυσίου; In English, Divide the Gold that you have found. Why then, says Xanthus, let us go home and share it. ”

“ Now says Æsop (after the telling of this Fable) you are not to Flatter your Selves that the Prophaners of Holy Altars, and the Oppressors of the Innocent, shall ever Escape Divine Vengeance. This Enraged the Magistrates to such a Degree, that they commanded the Officers Immediately to take Æsop from the Altar, and Dispatch him away to his Execution. ”

“ Æsop stept out and came Immediately back again, and tols his Master that he had seen Two Crows. Hereupon Xanthus went out himself, and finding but One, (for the Other was flown away) he fell Outragiously upon Æsop for making Sport with him, And order’d him to be soundly Lash’d for’t, but just as they were stripping him for the Execution, In comes One to Invite Xanthus abroad to Supper. Well Master, says Æsop, and where’s the Credit of your Augury Now? When, I that say Two Crows, am to be beaten like a Dog, and You that saw but One, are going to make merry with your Friends? ”