would not pass unpunished. Neither did the great fabulist lack
posthumous honors; for a statue was erected to his memory at
Athens, the work of Lysippus, one of the most famous of Greek
sculptors. Phaedrus thus immortalizes the event:

Aesopo ingentem statuam posuere Attici,
Servumque collocarunt aeterna in basi:
Patere honoris scirent ut cuncti viam;
Nec generi tribui sed virtuti gloriam.

These few facts are all that can be relied on with any degree of
certainty, in reference to the birth, life, and death of Aesop.
They were first brought to light, after a patient search and
diligent perusal of ancient authors, by a Frenchman, M. Claude
Gaspard Bachet de Mezeriac, who declined the honor of being
tutor to Louis XIII of France, from his desire to devote himself
exclusively to literature. He published his Life of Aesop, Anno
Domini 1632. The later investigations of a host of English and
German scholars have added very little to the facts given by M.
Mezeriac. The substantial truth of his statements has been
confirmed by later criticism and inquiry. It remains to state,
that prior to this publication of M. Mezeriac, the life of Aesop
was from the pen of Maximus Planudes, a monk of Constantinople,
who was sent on an embassy to Venice by the Byzantine Emperor
Andronicus the elder, and who wrote in the early part of the
fourteenth century. His life was prefixed to all the early
editions of these fables, and was republished as late as 1727 by
Archdeacon Croxall as the introduction to his edition of Aesop.
This life by Planudes contains, however, so small an amount of
truth, and is so full of absurd pictures of the grotesque