fashion of all the minstrels of his day--more than
eight hundred years before Christ.

On the background of that dim distant long ago,
perhaps two hundred years later than Homer,
looms the magnificent figure of another mysterious
being--Aesop the Greek slave.

Wherever and whenever he lived, and whether,
in fact, he ever lived at all, he seems very real to
us, even though more than two thousand years have
passed. Among all the stories that scholars and
historians have told of him--sifting through the
centuries the true from the false--we get a vivid
picture of the man. He was born in Greece,
probably in Phrygia, about 620 years before Christ.
He had more than one master and it was the last,
Iadmon, who gave him his liberty because of his
talents and his wisdom. The historian Plutarch
recounts his presence at the court of Croesus,
King of Lydia, and his meeting Thales and Solon
there, telling us also that he reproved the wise
Solon for discourtesy toward the king. Aesop
visited Athens and composed the famous fable
of Jupiter and the Frogs for the instruction of
the citizens. Whether he left any written fables
is very uncertain, but those known by his name
were popular in Athens when that city was
celebrated throughout the world for its wit and its
learning. Both Socrates and Plato delighted