position of high renown. In his desire alike to instruct and to
be instructed, he travelled through many countries, and among
others came to Sardis, the capital of the famous king of Lydia,
the great patron, in that day, of learning and of learned men.
He met at the court of Croesus with Solon, Thales, and other
sages, and is related so to have pleased his royal master, by the
part he took in the conversations held with these philosophers,
that he applied to him an expression which has since passed into
a proverb, "The Phrygian has spoken better than all."

On the invitation of Croesus he fixed his residence at Sardis,
and was employed by that monarch in various difficult and
delicate affairs of State. In his discharge of these commissions
he visited the different petty republics of Greece. At one time
he is found in Corinth, and at another in Athens, endeavouring,
by the narration of some of his wise fables, to reconcile the
inhabitants of those cities to the administration of their
respective rulers Periander and Pisistratus. One of these
ambassadorial missions, undertaken at the command of Croesus, was
the occasion of his death. Having been sent to Delphi with a
large sum of gold for distribution among the citizens, he was so
provoked at their covetousness that he refused to divide the
money, and sent it back to his master. The Delphians, enraged at
this treatment, accused him of impiety, and, in spite of his
sacred character as ambassador, executed him as a public
criminal. This cruel death of Aesop was not unavenged. The
citizens of Delphi were visited with a series of calamities,
until they made a public reparation of their crime; and, "The
blood of Aesop" became a well-
known adage, bearing witness to the truth that deeds of wrong