Note 34:1 — INTRODUCTION.[vii:1]

That Aesop was killed by the Delphians for the cause here stated there seems to be no doubt; nor yet that Idmon, a descendant of the man of the same name who had owned and emancipated Aesop, received a large sum of money from the Delphians by way of expiation for their crime, to which they had probably in the mean time ascribed every bad harvest and every epidemic. It must be remembered that, before the rotation of crops became the habit of agriculturists, bad harvests were very frequent, and that, in the absence of sanitary rules and precautions, dangerous epidemics prevailed at short intervals in all the cities of the old world. It was not unnatural that these calamities should have been regarded as retributive judgments where a gross crime had been committed.