The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1909-07-29
Aesop and
the Fable
The First FabuliSt of the World Has
Never Been Excelled
BY Any One.


To be hideously homely and to know
it is very discouraging. To be deformed
and despised is, verify, terrible. But
when to these is added the degrading
influence of servitude, then, say, the
boundaries of human endurance have
been overshot and the purpose of life
shattered on great black wall OF an
awful obliquity. A homely, despised,
deformed dwarf was the slave, Aesop.
Yet out of it all his clever mind lifted
him to spendid station OF fortune.
twenty-five hundred years have passed
since his modest work was done, yet
every typical language of the Cauca-
sion family knows his name and re-
hearses the unobtrusive fables he IA
thered. The little principality of Phry-
gia is allowed the honor of his birth
place. 1t has been said that ''seven
cities through which the living Homer
begged his bread, now claim the Homer
dead" And after fashion the same
applies to Aesop.
He came into life when great forces
were at work among the races OF men.
Rich Croesus was beautifying splendid
Sardis then. Across the blue Aegean
fair Athens was lisping the first pure
accents of a noble language. Beyond
the ga stern plains-of the Tigris-the
ashes Of once proud Nineveh were
scarcely cold. Gay old Babylon was
entering her era of luxurious and licen-
tious revelry. Nabopolassar had just
secured for his renowned son Median
Princess and turned with insolent per-
fidy against his Assyrian monarch. To
the south Egypt with solemn grace was
slowly sinking into her dotage. Truly
it did not seem an auspiciOus time for
a groveling serf to commence reputa-
tion. The grand, the ostentatious, the
dazzling, were the order of the day.
Simple truths, harmlessly w0rded,
seemed very weak display. Yet this
poor, timid hunchback framed his un-
affected fables and offered them to
kings in competition with the lure of
kingdom Jugglery. In early youth he
had been shipped to Samos, ana serving
under the same master, had met the
woman Rhodopis, who afterward be-
came so famous as courteZan. Both
of these pitiable slaves, as an author
remarks, "rose from very mean condi-
tion to fortune, the one by the beauties
of his mind, the other by infamous
traffic in her personal charms"
The years passed and Aesop was
freed in the prime of life. The Great
Croesus, King of Lydia, bade him ac-
cept patronage in his court for life. 1t
was realization of the fairest dream,
of the saddest day of his faded servi-
.tude. How glad his heart must have
been. He who had been an uncouth
outcast, now specially sought com.
panion for king. Aesop had found
his power and employed it thereafter,
So it happened that be became a
great man to his generation and to fu.
ture generations. The seven sages
we're his friends and they were all found
In frequent converse, two or three times
at least, which was frequent for those
days. The inner sanctum of theil
thoughts became his property. And
not infrsquently was Aesop sent or
missions Of state by the famed King
who favored him. 1t was on one oi
these occasions that the poor fellow
ella shed with seeming destiny and
death. He had been commissioned tG
bear offerings and prayers to the Del
phian oracle and to distribute portion
of gold amongst the worthy Delphians
and bring lack prophecy.
In the course of his journey he hat
occasion to rebuke the Delphian In
habitants for some impertinence ane
among other things charged them witt
dependence on the benevolence of trav
-elers to the Shrine Of the Sybil. HI