Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/113

 HIPPONAX: '^SOP' 89 the name of ^Esop. He seems to be a mere story- figure, like Kerkops or Kreophylus, invented to pro- vide an author for the fables. He was a foreign slave — Thracian, Phrygian, or Ethiopian — under the same master as Rhodopis, the courtesan who ruined Sappho's brother. He was suitably deformed ; he was murdered at Delphi. Delphi dealt much in the deaths or tombs of celebrities. It used the graves of Neoptolemus and Hesiod to attract the sight-seer ; it extorted monetary atonement from the slayer of Apollo's inspired servant Archilochus. But in vEsop's case a descendant of his master ladmon made his murder a ground for claiming money from the Delphians ; so it is hard to see why they countenanced the story. Tradition gave ^sop interviews with Croesus and the Wise Men ; Aristo- phanes makes it a jocular reproach, not to have 'trodden weir your ^sop. He is in any case not a poet, but the legendary author of a particular type of story, which any one was at liberty to put into verse, as Socrates did, or to collect in prose, like Demetrius of Phalerum. Our oldest collections of fables are the iambics of Phaedrus and the elegiacs of Avianus in Latin, and the scazons of Babrius in Greek, all three post-Christian.