[In the essay that follows, Goodyear highlights Phaedrus's choice of style and attempts to explain his stature as an obscure poet.]

Phaedrus holds no exalted rank amongst Latin poets, but he claims serious attention by his choice of subject matter and his individualistic treatment of it. He was, as far as we know, the first poet, Greek or Roman, to put together a collection of fables and present them as literature in their own right, not merely as material on which others might draw. And on this collection he firmly imprinted his own personality, complacent, querulous, cantankerous. In prologues, epilogues, and occasionally elsewhere he reveals his grievances and aspirations. His fables contain elements of satire and 'social comment', not at all gentle: if he had chosen to write satire proper, he might have vied with Juvenal in trenchancy and bitterness.

Animal fables, usually purveying a simple moral, have a long prehistory in folklore. Thereafter they provided speakers and writers with a ready store of homely illus trations and precepts. The Greeks of the fourth century B.C. ascribed a mass of these fables to the wise and witty slave Aesop: how many of those which survive in fact go back to this shadowy figure we do not know, but we approach firmer ground with the collection of fables, attributed to Aesop or in the Aesopian tradition, compiled in prose by Demetrius of Phalerum (c. 300 B.C.). This book itself is lost (unless some parts have come to light on a papyrus)¹, but very probably it was Phaedrus' main source, perhaps his only source. We know of no other collections available to him. Certain recurrent features in Phaedrus may well derive from Demetrius, in particular promythia, initial statements of theme or moral, intended originally for the convenience of orators or others in search of illustrations. By couching his fables in verse Phaedrus gave them literary pretensions: they could no longer be regarded as rough material, to be shaped by others, for now the poet himself has done the polishing (1 prol. 1-2). Brevity is the virtue on which he most prides himself or which he feels conscious he must attain (2 prol. 12, 3 epil. 8, 4 epil. 7), but he is also aware of the need for variety (2prol. 10) and strives to achieve it. He had virtually no precedents to guide him, since hitherto fables had appeared only incidentally in poetry, as in Horace amongst others, sometimes elaborated, sometimes brief. Horace's carefully developed story of the town and country mouse (Sat. 2.6.79-117) possesses a delicate humour worlds removed from the crude psychology which Phaedrus regularly offers. We have something nearer to Phaedrus' manner in the story of the fox and the corn-bin (Epist. 1.7.29-33). No doubt Horace had some influence on him, but it was not very deep. Phaedrus stands apart from the main stream of Augustan and post-Augustan poetry.

Demetrius' single book of fables could not supply Phaedrus with sufficient number or variety of themes. And so, particularly in Books 3-5, he adds much new material of his own (see 4prol. 11-13), in part of contemporary interest, Roman rather than Greek. Hence such poems as 2.5 (the emperor Tiberius and the officious footman), 3.10 (the woman falsely suspected of adultery), and 5.7 (the inordinate conceit of the musician Princeps). In thus using the fable as a vehicle for very diverse themes Phaedrus is not uniformly successful, nor can he sustain overall the qualities of simplicity and artlessness which he affects. 3.10 and 5.7 are long-winded and tedious, as is 4.11 (the thief and the lamp), a fable more in the Aesopian vein, but apparently Phaedrus' own creation (see 11. 14-15). He is more interesting when he writes of his own poetry, as in 4.7, a derisive riposte to a detractor, reminiscent in some respects both of Persius and Martial. But even here, by clumsily appending an epimythium quite out of place in a personal poem, he reveals that he is ill at ease with his medium.

At the outset Phaedrus affirms that his purpose is to amuse and instruct, and he discharges this intention as best he can, baldly obtruding instruction in promythia or epimythia. He may, intermittently at least, have another, ulterior purpose, covertly to allude to circumstances and personalities of his day. We learn from 3 prol. 38ff. that he fell foul of Sejanus. What poems in Books 1-2 excited Sejanus' anger we cannot tell: they may, of course, be amongst those now lost. Phaedrus says (3 prol. 49-50) that he does not seek to brand individuals, but to display the manners of society generally. Whether that be true or not, it is not surprising that he caused offence, for the Romans of this period were alert to double-entendre and quick to sense an affront. And he does not always veil his thoughts: thus 1.1 is explicitly directed against those who 'use trumpedup charges to crush the innocent' and 1.15 is devised to illustrate that 'on a change in government the poor merely get a master with a different name'. For one of his humble status Phaedrus is singularly outspoken. And he is no detrectator sui: 3 prol. ought to have been a modest apologia, but it proves to be an impudent selfjustification. Housman said that Phaedrus' 'spiritual home was the stable and the farmyard'. He might, one may feel, have been even more at home in the Subura: he would certainly not have denied that 'the proper study of mankind is man'.

Phaedrus' language is generally plain and commonplace, occasionally coarse. He admits colloquial and prosaic terms avoided by most of the poets. He does not try to create a distinct style for his fables: at the most we may discern a few mannerisms and favourite expressions. He chose to employ senarii like those of the early dramatists rather than the more restrictive trimeters used by Catullus and Horace amongst others: the looser verse-form was indeed better suited to his motley subject matter and unselective vocabulary. Linguistically he shows much similarity to satire and epigram, and a marked affinity to mime, as represented by the excerpted sententiae of Publilius Syrus.

Phaedrus has certain merits. Like Publilius, he can point a memorable phrase. His stories can be charmingly lucid and simple. But they would have been much improved by excision of promythia: here was a damnosa hereditas from Demetrius which, for all his independence, Phaedrus lacked the good sense to abandon. Again, his brevity is not always commendable: many of the fables seem flat and jejune, devoid of the detail and colour which their subjects invited. In antiquity Phaedrus won little recognition. He is ignored by all first-century writers, with the possible exception of Martial.² And when at a later day Phaedrus' poems were recast into prose, his name was removed from them. Avianus knew of his work, but scarcely used it, preferring to follow Babrius. Nowadays he seems wholly to have lost the appeal which he exercised in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Yet animal stories are more popular now than ever before, although (or because) our society as a whole is remote from countryside and farmyard. Phaedrus' fall from favour may be explained variously. Only limited time is now available in schools for Latin reading and we tend to concentrate from the start on a few major authors. Again, moralizing has long been out of fashion, and Phaedrus' moralizing is trite and wearisome. Seneca has suffered a similar neglect for similar reasons, though we have recently seen a revival of interest in his works. Perhaps Phaedrus too will obtain some rehabilitation, but one may doubt it. His poems possess neither the substance nor the vigour nor the imagination necessary to secure them against the test of time.

Notes

¹ See Perry (1965) xiv-xv.

² Mart. 3.20.5 aemulatur improbi locos Phaedri 'he imitates the passages [sic] of naughty Phaedrus', is doubly problematic. The paradosis locos is untenable and may reasonably be corrected to iocos 'jests' or logos 'fables'. The latter correction, if right, would strongly suggest that the fabulist is meant. But we cannot be sure that it is right. Again, it is debatable whether improbus fits the Phaedrus we know.

Works Cited

Perry, B. E. (1965). Babrius and Phaedrus. Loeb. London & Cambridge, Mass.