Last Semitic Lecture.

Mr. Joseph Jacobs, of London, delivered the last of the lectures before the Semitic Conference last night upon "The Fables of the Talmud."

There are in all thirty fables in the Talmud which have come down in Esop's Fables, until now they are well known folk-lore. In looking at the original source of the fables we find that they came first from India. Then they were taken up by the Greeks, including Esop, and by them handed down to the Romans. Of the 30 fables of the Talmud, 18 can be traced to Classic and Indian origin and 5 to the purely Indian. The remainder are of later growth and of purely Talmudic origin.

In the year 52 B. C. an embassy was sent from Ceylon to Rome. The embassy was intercepted in Lydia and it is therefore conjectured that the fables were spread in Asia Minor and from there into India. The embassy later proceeded to Rome and spread the fables there also. Proof of this exists in the parallelism between the various authors of fables who wrote at this time. A connection between the 7 Talmudic and Buddhist fables may be traced to this same embassy.