Three Hundred Æsop's Fables

[Æsop] was owned by two masters in succession both inhabitants of Samos Xanthus and Jadmon the latter of whom gave him his liberty as a reward for his learning and wit. One of the privileges of a freedman in the ancient republics of Greece was the permission to take an active interest in public affairs; and Æsop like the philosophers Phædo Menippus and Epictetus in later times raised himself from the indignity of a servile condition to a position of high renown...