According to Planudes,[130] Esop was born at Amorium, in the Greater Phrygia, a slave, ugly exceedingly: he was sharp-chinned, snub-nosed, bull-necked, blubber-lipped, and extremely swarthy (whence his name, _Ais-opos_, or _Aith-opos_: burnt-face, blackamoor); pot-bellied, crook-legged, and crook-backed; perhaps uglier even than the Thersites of Homer; worst of all, tongue-tied, obscure and inarticulate in his speech; in short, everything but his mind seemed to mark him out for a slave. His first master sent him out to dig one day. A husbandman having presented the master with some fine fresh figs, they were given to a slave to be set before him after his bath. Esop had occasion to go into the house; meanwhile the other slaves ate the figs, and when the master missed them they accused Esop, who begged a moment's respite: he then drank some warm water and caused himself to vomit, and as he had not broken his fast his innocence was thus manifest. The same test discovered the thieves, who by their punishment illustrated the proverb: Whoso against another worketh guile Thereby himself doth injure unaware.[131] [130] _Fabulae Romanenses Graece conscriptae ex recensione et cum adnotationibus_, Alfredi Eberhard (Leipzig, 1872), vol. i, p. 226 ff. [131] It would have been well had the sultan Bayazid compelled his soldier to adopt this plan when accused by an old woman of having drunk up all her supply of goat's milk. The soldier declared his innocence, upon which Bayazid ordered his stomach to be cut open, and finding the milk not yet digested, quoth he to the woman: "Thou didst not complain without reason." And, having caused her to be recompensed for her loss, "Now go thy way," he added, "for thou hast had justice for the wrong done thee." Next day the master goes to town. Esop works in the field, and entertains with his own food some travellers who had lost their way, and sets them on the right road again. They are really priests of Artemis, and having received their blessing he falls asleep, and dreams that Tyche (i.e. Fortune) looses his tongue, and gives him eloquence. Waking, he finds he can say _bous_, _onos_, _dikella_, (ox, ass, mattock). This is the reward of piety, for "well-doing is full of good hopes." Zenas, the overseer, is rebuked by Esop for beating a slave. This is the first time he has been heard to speak distinctly. Zenas goes to his master and accuses Esop of having blasphemed him and the gods, and is given Esop to sell or give away as he pleases. He sells him to a trader for three obols (4-1/2d.), Esop pleading that, if useless for aught else, he will do for a bugbear to keep his children quiet. When they arrive home the little ones begin to cry. "Was I not right?" quoth Esop, and the other slaves think he has been bought to avert the Evil Eye.