of the Lydian empire, that submission which he was willing to have accepted, but which they had refused to make, before. Aristotle records a fable of Esop, which he supposes him to have delivered to the people of Samus, in behalf of one of their demagogues; who had grown fat upon the spoils of the people, and was at last brought to account before them P. We are told that this fable was a favourite one of Tiberius; who was in the habit of quoting it, or one very like it, to justify his well-known policy in keeping his governors of provinces so long in office 4. In the same chapter, Aristotle quotes also a fable of the poet Stesichorus ", which he delivered at Himera in Sicily, when the people, having appointed Phalaris Tρanyov autoкpáτopa already, were deliberating next whether they should allow him a bodyguard. Conon in his Ayous quotes the same fable; substituting only the name of Gelo, for that of Phalaris. Every one must remember the fable of Menenius Agrippat, by which he restored harmony and a good understanding, between the Commons of Rome and the Patricians, U. C. 260, B. C. 494, when every other expedient had failed. A fable, something like this, is attributed by Dio Chrysostom to Esop, and quoted ": in which the eyes are described as envying the mouth the many P Rhet. ii. xx. 6. q Jos. Ant. Jud. xviii. vi. 5. Cf. SS. r Rhet. ii. xx. 5. Deperditi, ii. 553. Excerpta e Dione, 80. s Phot. Bibl. Cod. 186. p. 139. 9-22. ad sin. Cf. Hor. Epp. i. x. 34, &c. t Livy, ii. 32: Plut. Coriolan. vi: Quinctilian. v. xi. 19: SS. Deperd. ii. 145. Excerpta e Dione, xiii. u Opera, ii. 7. Orat. xxxiii. good things of which it partook, especially honey. Another, and one very like it in its moral and import, (which also was taken from Æsop,) is cited by Xenophon; where Socrates is recommending his friend Aristarchus to answer his family (who consisted of females) in the words of the dog to the sheep; they having complained of him (though in jest) that he was the only idle mouth among them, as having provided them with work, and so with the means of subsistence, but doing nothing himself. Diodorus Siculus relates how Eumenes, B. C. 316 or 315, applied to certain proposals of Antigonus, which would have reduced himself and his army to a powerless state, the fable of the lion, who obtained permission to court the daughter of a certain person, on condition of parting with his fangs and claws. Plutarch records a fable of Phocion's, by which he excused himself to the people of Athens, for not contributing on a certain occasion to a sum of money, intended to be raised merely that they might enjoy a feast, while his own creditor remained unpaid. The fable of the sheep's being invited by the wolves to make peace with them, on condition of giving up their dogs, was invented, as it would seem, or at least, was applied by Demosthenes, in answer to the demand of Alexander, that the people should make their peace with him by surrendering their δημαγωγοί οι ρήτορες Plutarch relates a fable, (borrowed, as he says x Memorab. ii. vii. 12-14. y Lib. xix. 25. z Phocion. 9. a Plut. Demosth. 23. Cf. Julian. Imperat. Orat. vii. 227. B. elsewhere, from Esop,) by which a philosopher of antiquity consoled Arsinoe, one of the queens of Egypt, for the loss of her son, more effectually than any thing else had done". Justin has an account of a fable, which he ascribes to one of the natives of the country, in which Massilia or Marseilles was founded, and which he supposes to have been addressed by him to the king of the country, by way of dissuading him from granting a site to the city, or permission to build upon one. If he allowed it to be built, as the moral of the fable implied, it would be the destruction of the neighbouring country; opprimendamque in ipso ortu, ne mox validior ipsum obrueret. If this fable is authentic, it must be of very high antiquity; as Marseilles was founded about the end of the sixth century before Christ; and its foundation is placed by Justin in the reign of Tarquinius Priscus. The fable of the middle-aged man, with his two wives, an old and a young one, the former of whom plucked all the black hairs out of his head, and the latter all the grey, was applied by the celebrated Lusitanian partisan, Viriathus, to the temporizing policy of the people of Tucca, who would not join either himself, or the Romans, outright; and as a warning of the consequences this policy would be of to themselves d. Appian relates a fable of Sylla, the dictator's, which he addressed to the people of Rome, U. C. 673. about the ploughman, who burnt his jacket at last, after trying twice or thrice in vain to clear it b Operum vi. 425, 426. Consolatio ad Apollonium. c Histor. xliii. 4. d SS. Deperditi, ii. 97. Excerpta Diodori 111. lib. xxxiii. • De Bellis Civilibus, 101. VOL. V. PART II. C of fleas the moral of which fable was of very tremendous import to his audience. These instances may suffice, for examples of apologues or fables, actually employed as grave and serious arguments on corresponding practical emergencies. We might produce many more, of their employment in the way of moral or didactic improvement: but I shall mention only, as well-known specimens of that kind of application, these of Horace-the city mouse and the country mouse f; the frog and her young ones; the field mouse and the weasel ; to which we may doubtless add, as taken from some fable or other, his, Incipe, qui recte vivendi prorogat horam Rusticus exspectat dum defluat amnis: at ille And also, Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus h. Maximus Tyrius premises a fable of Æsop's to the dissertation, in which he shews that if pleasure is a good, it is yet not a permanent one; and as the groundwork of the ensuing discussion. He has another fable, where he is discussing the charge of pæderasty, as brought against Socrates; to shew that Socrates, even as ἐραστὴς τῶν παίδων, was so only as the shepherd is of the sheep; others, in the same capacity as butchers are of the sheep k. Æsop's fable of the fox and the crow, occurs in the Florida of Apuleius; and Dio Chrysostom quotes another of his, about the advice of the owl to the h f Sermon. ii. vi. 79—117. g Ibid. ii. iii. 314-320. Epp. i. vii. 29-33. Cf. Ibid. i. i. 73–75. b Epp. i. ii. 41. De Arte Poetica, 139. i Diss. iii. 1. k Diss. xxv. 2. birds to pluck up the oak, when first planted1; as well as a fable of some countryman of Æsop's m. We have two fables in Achilles Tatius, De Clitophontis et Leucippes Amoribus ", which are so contrived as to be the counterparts of each other; and are both of them very ingenious, and very beautifully told. Philo Judæus quotes a maλaids λóyos, which, however, is not so much an apologue, as a mythus, traditionally handed down from wise men of former days, but whether Jews or Gentiles, he does not say; the moral of which is to account for the origin of music and song ". He has another, in explanation of the diversities of tongues or voices (at present in existence) among animals-which originally had but one speech P. There is a los very elegantly related in the Opera Inedita of Fronto, one of the preceptors of Marcus Aurelius; the substance of which is an account of the origin, endowments, and prerogatives of Somnus or sleep 1: and there is a fragment of another fable, entitled, De disceptatione vitis et arboris ilicis, in the same work; which Fronto professes to have borrowed from his own tutor and preceptor, Dionysius Tenuior". There is also a very long mythus, or allegorical tale, in Julian's seventh orations; the import of which is to flatter his personal vanity, by setting 1 Apuleii Opera ii. 151, 152. Dio. Chrys. Opera, i. 373. Orat. xii. m Ibid. i. 684-686. xxxii. n Lib. ii. 21, 22. • Operum i. 348. 12-34. De Plantatione Noe. 19. De Confusione Linguarum. De Feriis Alsiensibus 3. nibus i. Fragm. 6. P Ibid. 405. 34–406. q Pars Prior. 188. sqq. r Pars Altera, 241. De Oratio8 s Opera, 227. C-234. C. |