It is in the fitness of things that the early biographies of Æsop, the great fabulist, should be entirely fabulous. Macrobius has distinguished between _fabula_ and _fabulosa narratio_: "He would have a fable to be absolutely false, and a fabulous narration to be a number of fictions built upon a foundation of truth." The Lives of Æsop belong chiefly to the latter category. In the following pages what is known of the life of Æsop is set forth, together with condensed versions of some of his most characteristic fables, which have long passed into the wisdom of all nations, this being a subject that calls for treatment on somewhat different lines from the majority of the works dealt with in THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS. _Introductory_ Pierre Bayle, in his judicious fashion, sums up what is said of Æsop in antiquity, resting chiefly upon Plutarch. "Plutarch affirms: (1) That Crœsus sent Æsop to Periander, the Tyrant of Corinth, and to the Oracle of Delphi; (2) that Socrates found no other expedient to obey the God of Dreams, without injuring his profession, than to turn the Fables of Æsop into verse; (3) that Æsop and Solon were together at the Court of Crœsus, King of Lydia; (4) that those of Delphi, having put Æsop to death cruelly and unjustly, and finding themselves exposed to several calamities on account of this injustice, made a public declaration that they were ready to make satisfaction to the memory of Æsop; (5) that having treated thereupon with a native of Samos, they were delivered from the evil that afflicted them." To this summary Bayle added a footnote concerning "The Life of Æsop, composed by Meziriac": "It is a little book printed at Bourg-en-Bress, in 1632. It contains only forty pages in 16. It is becoming exceedingly scarce.... This is what I extract from it. It is more probable that Æsop was born at Cotiœum, a town of Phrygia, than that he was born at Sardis, or in the island of Samos, or at Mesembria in Thrace. The first master that he served was one Zemarchus, or Demarchus, surnamed Carasius, a native and inhabitant of Athens. Thus it is probable that it was there he learned the purity of the Greek tongue, as in its spring, and acquired the knowledge of moral philosophy which was then in esteem....