Pisistratus had usurped the sovereignty and abolished the popular government, and observing the Athenians bore this new yoke with great impatience, he repeated to them the fable of the frogs who demanded a king from Jupiter.

It is doubted whether the fables of Æsop, such as we have them, are all his, at least in regard to the expression. Great part of them are ascribed to Planudes, who wrote his life, and lived in the fourteenth century.

Æsop is reckoned the author and inventor of this simple and natural manner of conveying instruction by tales and fables; in which light Phædrus speaks of him:

Esopus auctor quam materiam reperit,

Hanc ego polivi versibus senariis.

But the glory of this invention is really due to the poet Hesiod ;* an invention which does not seem to be of any great importance, or extraordinary merit, and yet has been much esteemed and made use of by the greatest philosophers and ablest politicians. Plato tells us, that Socrates, a little before he died, turned some of Esop's fables into verse; and Plato himself earnestly recommends it to nurses to instruct their children in it betimes, in order to form their manners, and to inspire them early with the love of wisdom.

Fables could never have been so universally adopted by all nations, as we see they have, if there was not a vast fund of useful truths contained in them, and agreeably conceived under that plain and negligent disguise, in which their peculiar character consists. The Cator certainly designing to instruct mankind, by the very prospect of nature, has endowed the brute part of it with various instincts, inclinations, and properties, to serve as so many pictures in miniature to man, of the several duties incumbent upon him; and to point out to him the good or evil qualities he ought to acquire or avoid. Thus has he given us, for instance, a lively image of meekness and innocence in the lamb; of fidelity and friendship in the dog; and on the contrary, of violence, rapaciousness, and cruelty, in the wolf, the lion, and the tiger; and so of the other species of animals; and all this he has designed, not only as instruction, but as a secret reproof to man if he should be indifferent about those qualities in himself, which he cannot forbear esteeming or detesting, even in the brutes themselves.

This is a dumb language which all nations understand; it is a sentiment engraven in nature, which every man carries about with him. Esop was the first of all the profane writers who laid hold

*Пæ quoque fabulæ, quæ, etiamsi originem non ab Æsopo acceperunt (nam videtur earum primus auctor Hesiodus,) nomine tamen Æsopi maximè celebrantur, ducere animos olent, præcipuè rusticorum et imperitorum; qui et simpliciùs quæ ficta sunt audiunt, et apti voluptate facile iis quibus delectantur consentiunt. Quintil. 1. v. c. 12.

1 Plat in Phæd. p. 60,”

Lib. ii. de Rep. p. 378.

of and unfolded it, made happy application of it, and attracted man's attention to this sort of simple and natural instruction, which is within the reach of all capacities, and equally adapted to persons of all ages and conditions. He was the first that, in order to give body and substance to virtues, vices, duties, and maxims of society, did, by an ingenious artifice and innocent fiction, invent the method of clothing them with graceful and familiar images borrowed from nature, by giving language to brute beasts, and ascribing sense and reason to plants and trees, and all sorts of inanimate

creatures.

The fables of Æsop are void of all ornament; but abound with good sense, and are adapted to the capacity of children, for whom they are more particularly composed. Those of Phædrus are in a style somewhat more elevated and diffused, but at the same time have a simplicity and elegance, that very much resemble the Attic spirit and style in the plain way of writing, which was the finest and most delicate kind of composition in use among the Grecians. Monsieur de la Fontaine, who was very sensible that the French tongue is not susceptible of the same elegant simplicity, has enlivened his fables with a sprightly and original turn of thought and expression, peculiar to himself, which no other person has yet

been able to imitate.

It is not easy to conceive,* why Seneca asserts as a fact, that the Romans in his time had never tried their pens in this kind of composition. Were the fables of Phædrus unknown to him?

Plutarch relates the manner of Esop's death. He went to Delphi, with a great quantity of gold and silver, to offer, in the name of Croesus, a great sacrifice to Apollo, and to give each inhabitant a considerable sum. A quarrel, which arose between im and the people of Delphi, occasioned him, after the sacrifice, to send back the money to Crœsus, and to inform him, that those for whom it was intended had rendered themselves unworthy of his bounty. The inhabitants of Delphi caused him to be condemned as guilty of sacrilege, and to be thrown down from the top of a rock. The god, offended by this action, punished them with a plague and famine; so that to put an end to these evils, they caused it to be signified in all the assemblies of Greece, that if any one, for the honour of Æsop, would come and claim vengeance for his death, they would give him satisfaction. At the third generation, a man from Samos presented himself, who had no other relation to sop than being descended from the person who had bought that fabulist. The Delphians made this man satisfaction, and thereby delivered themselves from the pestilence and famine that distressed them.

* Non audeo te usque eò producere, ut fabellas quoque et Æsopeos logos INTENTATUM ROMANIS INGENIIS OPUS, solitâ tibi venustate connectas. Senec. de Consol. ad Polyb c. 27. † De sera Numinis vindictâ. p. 556, 557.

Four minæ, equal to 240 livres, about 87. 10,
Herod. lib. i. сар. 134.

296

HISTORY OF GREECE.

The Athenians, those excellent judges of true glory, erected a noble statue to this learned and ingenious slave; to let all the people know, says Phædrus,* that the ways of honour were open indifferently to all mankind, and that it was not to birth, but merit, they paid so honourable a distinction.

Æsopo ingentem statuam posuere Attici,
Servumque collocarunt æternâ in basi,
Patere honoris scirent ut cuncti viam,
Nec generi tribui, sed vertuti gloriam.

*Herod. lib. ii. cap. 134.

BEFORE Darius came to be king,* he was called Ochus. At his succession he took the name of Darius, which, according to Herodotus, in the Persian language signifies an avenger, or a man that defeats the schemes of another; probably because he had punished and put an end to the insolence of the Magian impostor. He reigned thirty-six years.

SECTION I.

Darius's marriages. The imposition of tributes. The insolence and punishment of Intaphernes. The death of Oretes. The story of Democedes, a physician. The Jews permitted to carry on the building of their temple. The generosity of Syloson rewarded.

Before Darius was elected king he Gobryas, whose name is not known.

had married the daughter of Artabarzanes, the eldest of the three sons whom he had by her, afterwards disputed the empire with Xerxes.

A. M. 3483.

When Darius was seated on the throne,f the better Ant. J. C. 521. to secure himself therein, he married two of Cyrus's daughters, Atossa, and Artistona. The former had been wife to Cambyses, her own brother, and afterwards to Smerdis the Magian, during the time he possessed the throne. Artistona was still a virgin when Darius married her; and of all his wives was the person he most loved. He likewise married Parmys, daughter of the true Smerdis, who was Cambyses's brother, as also Phedyma, † Herod. 1. iii. c. 88.

* Herod. l. vi. c. 98. Val. Max, 1. ix. c. 2.

daughter to Otanes, by whose management the imposture of the Magian was discovered. By these wives he had a great number of children of both sexes.

*

We have already seen, that the seven conspirators who put the Magian to death, had agreed among themselves, that he whose horse, on a day appointed, first neighed, at the rising of the sun, should be declared king; and that Darius's horse, by an artifice of his groom, procured his master that honour. The king, desiring to transmit to future ages his gratitude for this signal service, caused an equestrian statue to be set up, with this inscription: Darius, the son of Hystaspes, acquired the kingdom of Persia by means of his horse (whose name was inserted,) and of his groom, Oebares. There is in this inscription, in which we see the king is not ashamed to own himself indebted to his horse and his groom for so transcendant a benefaction as the regal diadem, when it was his interest, one would think, to have it considered as the fruits of a superior merit; there is, I say, in this inscription, a simplicity and sincerity strikingly characteristic of those ancient times, and extremely remote from the pride and vanity of our own.

One of the first cares of Darius,† when he was settled on the throne, was to regulate the state of the provinces, and to put his finances into good order. Before his time, Cyrus and Cambyses had contented themselves with receiving from the conquered nations such free gifts only as they voluntarily offered, and with requiring a certain number of troops when they had occasion for them. But Darius perceived that it was impossible for him to preserve all the nations subject to him in peace and security, without keeping up regular forces; and equally impossible to maintain these forces, without assigning them a certain pay; or to be able punctually to give them that pay, without laying taxes and impositions upon the people.

In order therefore the better to regulate the administration of his finances, he divided the whole empire into twenty districts or governments, each of which was annually to pay a certain sum to the satrap appointed for that purpose. The natural subjects, that is, the Persians, were exempt from all imposts. Herodotus gives an exact enumeration of these provinces, which may very much contribute to give ús a just idea of the extent of the Persian empire.

In Asia it comprehended all that now belongs to the Persians and Turks; in Africa, it took in Egypt and part of Nubia, as also the coast of the Mediterranean as far as the kingdom of Barca; in Europe, part of Thrace and Macedonia. But it must be observed, that in this vast extent of country, there were several nations which were only tributary, and not properly subjects to Persia; as is the case at this day with respect to the Turkish empire.