"In process of time he was sold to Xanthus, a native of the Isle of Samos, and afterwards to Idmon, or Iadmnon, the philosopher, who was a Samian also, and who enfranchised him. After he had recovered his liberty, he soon acquired a great reputation among the Greeks; so that the report of his singular wisdom having reached the ears of Crœsus, he sent to inquire after him; and having conceived an affection for him, he obliged him by his favours to engage himself in his service to the end of his life. He travelled through Greece--whether for his own pleasure or for the private affairs of Crœsus is uncertain--and passing by Athens, soon after Pisistratus had usurped the sovereign power there and had abolished the popular state, and seeing that the Athenians bore the yoke very impatiently, he told them the Fable of the Frogs that asked a King of Jupiter. Afterwards he met the Seven Wise Men in the City of Corinth at the Tyrant Periander's. Some relate that, in order to show that the life of man is full of miseries, and that one pleasure is attended with a thousand pains, Æsop used to say that when Prometheus took the clay to form man, he did not temper it with water, but with tears." Concerning the death of this extraordinary man we read that Æsop went to Delphi, with a great quantity of gold and silver, being ordered by Crœsus to offer a great sacrifice to Apollo, and to give a considerable sum to each inhabitant. The quarrel which arose between the Delphians and him was the occasion, after his sending away the sacrifice, of his sending back the money to Crœsus; for he thought that those for whom this prince designed it had rendered themselves unworthy of it. The inhabitants of Delphi contrived an accusation of sacrilege against him, and, pretending that they had convicted him, cast him down from the top of a rock. Bayle has a long line of centuries at his back when he says: "Æsop's lectures against the faults of men were the fullest of good sense and wit that can be imagined." He substantiates this affirmation in the following manner: "Can any inventions be more happy than the images Æsop made use of to instruct mankind? They are exceedingly fit for children, and no less proper for grown persons; they are all that is necessary to perfect a precept --I mean the mixture of the useful with the agreeable." He then quotes Aulus Gellius as saying: "Æsop the Phrygian fabulist was not without reason esteemed to be wise, since he did not, after the manner of the philosophers, severely and imperiously command such things as were fit to be advised and persuaded, but by feigning, diverting and entertaining apologues, he insinuates good and wholesome advice into the minds of men with a kind of willing attention."