SOURCE: "Phaedrus and Fable: Poetry of the Time," in A Literary History of Rome: In the Silver Age, edited by A. M. Duff, Ernest Benn Limited, 1964, pp. 107-27.

[In the following essay, first published in 1927, Duff discusses what is known of Phaedrus's life, reviews the critical consensus on his work, and locates his work in the tradition that spans from Aesop to the medieval French interest in fables.]

Phaedrus: The Fabulist of Rome

Phaedrus, the fabulist of Roman literature, was an alien slave of Thracian, or, to use his own adjective, 'Pierian' origin. The lines¹ in which he laid claim to birth 'almost in the very school of the Muses' are to be taken, according to the spirit of the context, in the strict geographical sense and not as a metaphorical anticipation of the Tennysonian conception that 'the poet in a golden clime is born.' Perhaps the plain prose of the matter is that his birthplace was the Roman colony of Philippi. Evidently he was brought to Italy when young; for he refers to studying Ennius in boyhood.² His Latin and Greek education followed the customary routine, to judge from the fact that, although fables do not readily lend themselves to a display of erudition, yet his yield proof of acquaintance with such authors as Virgil, Euripides and Simonides.³ Hardly mentioned in classical literature, his name first appears as a nominative, 'Phaedrus,' in a prefatory letter of Avianus;⁴ but some have argued that it is more in accord with linguistic usage and inscriptional evidence to call him 'Phaeder.' Inasmuch, then, as he became a freedman in the household of Caesar Augustus, one may consider his full name C. Julius Phaeder or Phaedrus.⁵ Concerning the limits of his life, and its scanty details, we are dependent upon deductions from his writings. There is a prevalent consensus among critics that the first two of his five books were published during the reign of Tiberius,⁶ perhaps together, perhaps separately as Ellis supposed,⁷ and that the third book appeared under Caligula, some time between A.D. 37 and the beginning of 41. Now, since passages⁸ in that book suggest that the author was already conscious of approaching age, there is justifica tion for guessing that he was born some fifteen years before the Christian era.⁹ Although in Book III he had decided to relinquish authorship, he explains his change of mind in the prologue to the next book,¹⁰ and even after that we possess a fifth, the product of his advanced years." The two opening books, which explain in their prologues the relationship between the present fables and those of Aesop, may be regarded as dedicated to readers at large;¹² but the rest were dedicated to individuals; namely, Book III to Eutychus, plausibly identified with the chariot-driver of the Greens prominent under Caligula;¹³ IV to one Particulo, for whom Phaedrus entertained a respect enhanced, doubtless, by gratification at being quoted in his compositions;¹⁴ and Book V to a certain Philetes, or Philetus, who is pointedly expected to see the applicability to the aged author of the tale about the old hunting-dog past its best:

You praise our past, if what we are you blame:
Nicely, Philetes, you can grasp my aim.¹⁵

In addition to these five books, for which (discounting the recorded readings of the lost Remensis and three imperfect codices) only a single manuscript¹⁶ is extant, there is an 'Appendix' of about thirty fables. These, although they look tinctured with medieval colour and show signs of having been supplemented from the Greek collection of Babrius, are considered to have been drawn by Perotti in the fifteenth century from a subsequently lost abridgement of Phaedrus.¹⁷ Twenty so-called 'New Fables', gained from the prose paraphrases associated with the name of the medieval Romulus, appeared in Nilant's edition early in the eighteenth century. The traces discernible therein of their original verse-form led scholars like Dressier and Lucian Miiller to rewrite them in metre.¹⁸ Recently Zander in his Phaedrus Solutus has reclaimed thirty fables which he has rewritten in senarii after a careful investigation of the three prose-collections—the Ademarian, the Wissemburgensis and 'Romulus.' Zander has aimed at separating Phaedrian and non-Phaedrian elements in the prose paraphrases; he has isolated the traces of fifth-century or sixth-century Latin comparable with what is to be found in Salvianus or Gregory of Tours; and, following principles of Phaedrian metric expounded by Havet, he has made a rather more successful iambic reconstruction of missing fables than some of his predecessors in this field.

Much of Phaedrus, then, is lost. This is a safe conclusion, if only from gaps in our existing text and from the disproportionate length of the books—the total of ninety-three fables in the five books being made up of the constituent numbers thirty-one, eight, nineteen, twenty-five and ten. Besides, an objection of the imaginary matter-of-fact critic forestalled by Phaedrus¹⁹ is that 'not merely beasts but trees do speak' in his fables; yet, in such of the surviving tales as are incontestably by Phaedrus, trees nowhere appear among the interlocutors.²⁰

If Phaedrus had been asked what was the origin of his material, he would have answered 'Aesop' without hesitancy or qualification. Yet the true answer is not so simple. On the one hand, the well-springs lay far deeper in primeval Aryan tales than Phaedrus could have dreamed, and on the other hand the fables which he assumed to be by Aesop consisted largely of accretions subsequent to Aesop's time. The primitive beast-story, so widespread an element in folklore, becomes literary when it is shaped either to satiric or to moral purpose. Some such shaping of the beast-fable lies at the root of the renown of the Samian slave, the actual 'Aisopos,' who flourished in the middle of the sixth century B.C. From tradition and experience—that great repository of practical morality—the Greek observer drew his store. But in the history of literature 'Aesop' became gradually a vague name; for later tales were freely ascribed to him as a kind of father of fable, and such tales enjoyed wide popularity among Greek democracies both as a convenient cloak for social criticism and as a simple form of amusement. In this respect, then, there is an 'Aesopic' just as there is a 'Homeric' Question. The supposed Aesopic fables … were gathered about 300 B.C. by Demetrius of Phalerum, once tyrant at Athens, and afterwards savant at Alexandria, where he did much to establish the great library. This Greek prose collection it was—altered and interpolated by Alexandrine scholars—which formed the basis of Phaedrus's neat version in Latin iambics. The same collection, it may be inferred from the reappearance of several stories in Plutarch (or in writings attributed to him), was a source common to Phaedrus and Plutarch (or the pseudo-Plutarch).²¹ Further, there is ground for holding that the modem 'Aesop' contains actually more of Phaedrus than of Aisopos, thanks to the influence exerted by Phaedrus in medieval times, mainly if not entirely through the prose-forms to which his verses had been reduced.

Phaedrus was not the first who used the fable in Roman literature. It had been employed incidentally by Ennius, Lucilius and Horace.²² Phaedrus, however, was the first to compose separate volumes of fables in Latin: this was the one Hellenic form not yet taken over. Drama, epic, didactic, elegy, lyric, history presented no fresh open ings; but a limited claim to originality might be based on free poetic adaptations of Greek prose-fables current under the name of 'Aesop.' The attitude of Phaedrus to 'Aesop' was not one which paused critically to examine the implications of the name, but evidently accepted 'Aesop' as the personality responsible for the fables ascribed to him. Phaedrus, therefore, felt that, however much he might modify or add, he individually owed Aesop a debt for the substance at least of the fables; and this relationship to the Greek sage is proclaimed at the outset:

Matter which first old Aesop did rehearse
Hath Phaedrus polished in iambic verse.
Two boons my book hath; it can laughter raise
And give sage counsel in life's wildering maze.

Howbeit, should one think to criticise,
Since beasts, nay even trees, here sermonise,
Let him remember that in fables we
Divert ourselves with unreality.²³

Indeed, throughout we are continually being reminded of his model. The epilogue to the second book—an envoi to the volume which began with the piece just cited—gives utterance to his admiration in the sentiment which possessed a strong attraction for De Quincey:

To Aesop Athens reared a statue great,
And set on lasting marble base a slave—²⁴

a proof, says Phaedrus, that the pathway of honour lies open to all and that glory depends on merit instead of birth. If he follows in Aesop's steps, it is in no spirit of envy, but in one of fair emulation:

If Latium shall countenance my task,
More authors shall she have to match with Greece.²⁵

The prologue of the next book shows that this ambitious desire of bringing honour to Roman literature harmonises with his own patriotic appreciation of Hellenic traditions:

If Phrygian Aesop by his genius,
If Scythian Anacharsis could by his
Build deathless glory, why should I, who am
Of nearer kin to literary Greece,
Forsake in idle sleep my country's fame?²⁶

In a later poem, he pictures Aesop brought out in 'the fresh buskins' of the tragic trimeter;²⁷ elsewhere,²⁸ he protests against carping detractors who set successes among the fables to Aesop's account but failures to Phaedrus's own account. The last prologue offers the explanation that he employs Aesop's name to recommend his works, as great artists' names might be inscribed on productions not by themselves: this is virtually to amplify his remark in another place that the fables are 'not Aesop's, but Aesopian.'²⁹

It may well be, as Lucian Müller suggested,³⁰ that Phaedrus used a more complete Aesop than is now available, and that we therefore cannot know how much he owed; but, however extensive his debt, it does not amount to servile borrowing. Independence is not surprising in an author who explicitly recognises individuality in literature³¹ and who, while he undertakes to imitate Aesop's principle of instruction through examples, at the same time engages to introduce novel and diverting anecdotes:

The sage's method I shall keep with care:
Yet should it please me add some incidents
Whereby variety may charm the taste,
I pray thee, reader, take it courteously.³²

By such promised anecdotes, some from bygone Greek life, some from contemporary Rome, and by allusions to current events sufficiently caustic to bring trouble upon his head, Phaedrus added greatly to the living force of his work. Bent on his twofold purpose of amusement and counsel, he could not, without becoming a dull second-hand plagiarist, shut his eyes to his own times. Occasionally, indeed, the Roman setting is plainly revealed. It is so in the case of the too credulous father who slew his son under a misapprehension, and then by his suicide left his suspected wife to be haled before the centumuiri: it is so in the tale of the conceited flute-player called 'Princeps,'³³ who used to play accompaniments to the pantomimus Bathyllus and who, with sublime assurance, mistook for plaudits in his own honour the acclamations of the theatre intended for the real princeps, the emperor. Equally Roman, or at least Italian, is the atmosphere in the entertaining tale about the peasant who competed in pig-squeaking on the stage against a professional ventriloquist, and, despite his ingenious precaution of keeping a live porker hidden beneath his clothes to be pinched surreptitiously, was howled down by the audience as defective in realism! The closing situation is one of delicious irony when he turns the laugh against his judges by openly displaying the authentic grunter:

Look ye, this shows what critics you must be.34

Again, the painted 'history' of the warfare between mice and weasels³⁵ seems to allude to wall-paintings of a comic or burlesque nature such as can be illustrated from Pompeii. Another instance is a hit at the ardaliones,³⁶ the fussy triflers and ineffectual meddlers of Roman society. They are derided under the semblance of an officious slave who, by forcing his gardening labours upon the attention of his imperial majesty, tried hard to curry favour and possibly win the ceremonial slap (alapa) that conferred liberty:

But Phaedrus's satire was not merely social: it invaded politics. In one passage he refers to fable as a literary invention which might be of service when one dare not be outspoken;³⁸ and though it would be an exaggeration to consider him an organ of political opposition, he clearly did give umbrage in high quarters by criticism. There are always people ready to fit the satiric cap on their heads; and much in Phaedrus could be deemed offensive by a bad conscience. Some doubtless detected a political allusion where none was intended; yet there were lines which inevitably summoned up before the mind recent chapters in Roman history. No one, for instance, with republican sympathies in his heart could avoid putting his own interpretation and comment upon the lines:

Amid a change of government in states
Poor folk change nothing but their master's name.³⁹

Besides, certain fables definitely entered on dangerous ground. Thus, the familiar tale of the Wolf and the Lamb is explicitly levelled at false accusers, deriving special significance from the increase of informers (delatores), eager to secure convictions for treason, and encouraged by the authorities.⁴⁰ Nor is hatred of delatores under Tiberius far to seek in the story of the evil end which befell the Wolf who bore false witness to support the Dog as plaintiff in his invented claim against the Sheep for a loan.⁴¹ Indeed, there is a good deal of fun in the fables at the expense of law-courts and judges. The problem whether the emperor liked the anecdote (previously translated) concerning his snub administered to the officious slave must remain undetermined; and equally insoluble is the question whether he recognised his portrait in the dread King Water-snake sent to succeed King Log, the roi fainéant against whom the Frogs had petitioned;⁴² but, at any rate, for the emperor's minister Sejanus there was decidedly unpalatable reading in the first two books. Sejanus was very like the upstart Jackdaw in peacock's feathers and his projected alliance with Livia, widow of the Emperor's son Drusus, possibly lent a sting to the protests of the Frogs against the marriage of the Sun who, even as things were, dried up the pools: 'what will result if he have progeny?'⁴³ Whichever may have been the offending fables in the volume of Bad Beasts, Sejanus assuredly did institute proceedings against the author, who resented the indignity of suffering 'calamity' at such hands.⁴⁴ There is no evidence as to the punishment inflicted—whether it was banishment or imprisonment or even a return to slavery—but Phaedrus's tone proves that it left him sore; and the incident is one among many illustrations of the repressive influence of the imperial entourage, a circle where few dared say the thing they felt.

It was not only through political strictures that Phaedrus made enemies. As we shall find, his very style, his love of brevity and pith, incurred hostile criticism, and, like Terence, he felt bound to devote portions of his prologues to answering detractors. Annoyance was also given by the manner in which his fables upheld honesty and justice:

Hard task it is one's feeling to restrain,
When, conscious of sincere integrity,
'Tis badgered by the insolence of knaves.
'Who are they?' you will ask: well, time will show.
There is a motto which I learned at school:
'An open growl from common folk is crime.'
While I have wits, I shall remember well.⁴⁵

Perhaps he is over-insistent on the didactic element in his work and on the lessons derivable from regarding him seriously:

You take my work for jest; with naught to do
More grave, I wield an airy pen, 'tis true.
Howbeit, scan my trivial lays with care:
How great the profit you will gather there!⁴⁶

It is an important aspect of his relation to his times, and a powerful factor in his social criticism, that he emphasises the ubiquitous presence and frequent triumph of injustice. It would be too much to call him gloomy or pessimistic; yet his figures move in a beast-world where, notwithstanding the moral sermonettes, much hardship and unfairness are perforce endured. The Wolf tyrannises unmolested: the Lion insists that the whole spoil is his 'share' and defies his allies to demur: the Ass, captured by robbers, feels no worse for the change of owner than, as a rule, Rome might when she gets a new emperor.⁴⁷ When the great fall out, humble people have to suffer—so argue the Frogs about the battles of the Bulls.⁴⁸ In a life so troublous, resignation is assumed to be a wise precaution—the Frogs, oppressed by their terrible King Watersnake, after lazy King Log, come to realise that it is best to let well alone, or, even if things are not well, to bear the ills one has.⁴⁹ Accordingly, there is much acceptance of fate. This is a wicked world, and must be recognised as such; for so far are rogues from infallibly getting their deserts that their success is often a good advertisement for villainy (successus improborum plures allicit, II. iii. 7).

Phaedrus, however, looked beyond the Rome of his day to that wider sphere of human nature which the best fables always illustrate and to which they owe much of their perennial attraction:

My scheme will brand no individual,
But life itself and human ways describe:
'A heavy task to promise,' one may say.⁵⁰

This relation to life at large comes to a great extent under the second of his professed objects—sound counsel. For example, it is with becoming seriousness that he treats the idea of the two wallets for human shortcomings familiar in Catullus's allusion and forming the ancient analogue to Burns's aspiration:

Oh wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!

In Phaedrus it takes this shape:

With similar seriousness of tone he uses the instance of the treasure-dragon to introduce his impressive apostrophe to the miser.⁵² In another poem we find the wise pilot's advice for voyagers across the ocean of life:

Rejoice restrainedly and murmur slow;
For life is one long blend of weal and woe.⁵³

There is also a note of pathetic truth to human experience and of wistful yearning in the little piece on the rarity of affection in ordinary life:

The name of friend is common; friendship, rare.
When a small home was built by Socrates
(I would not shun his death to win his fame,
I'd yield to odium, if but cleared when dust),
One of the people—name unknown, of course—
Asked 'Why so small a house for one so great?'
The answer came ''Twill hold my real friends.'⁵⁴

Yet it would be unfair to leave the impression that even in his satire on human nature Phaedrus constantly wears a sober face. He does not forget that one of his objects is amusement; and although there may be little enough of the 'laughter' which he promised, still many subjects are treated lightly and pleasantly. In such manner he handles the recurrent foibles of humanity exemplified in braggarts, in public gullibility, in interested advisers, in the old lady with a weakness for drink, and so forth.⁵⁵ Here is his glance at good-looking and lucky fools:

Sir Reynard once a tragic mask espied:
'How fine a face to have no brain inside!'
Said he. And so with those to whom their fate
Gives rank and glory, but an empty pate.⁵⁶

Here again, a little more fully than in the Horatian parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus, we have a vivid illustration of 'much cry and little wool':

There is humour, too, as of some irresolute Sir Roger de Coverley, in Mr. Justice Ape's summing up of a case where prosecutor and defendant are alike disreputable and there has been unscrupulous cross-swearing. After hearing two clever but conflicting perorations, the Justice pronounces with Gilbertian comicality for both sides:

'You, Wolf, it seems, ne'er lost what now you claim:
I find, glib Fox, you stole it all the same!'⁵⁸

One must not overlook another source of charm. Good fables have a right to be read for the story alone. Now, as has been pointed out, much in Phaedrus comes down through Aesop from the primitive beast-story and folklore of the Aryans: much is but the residuum of what prehistoric fancy was capable of inventing and believing in far-off times when quadruped, reptile and bird were supposed to talk. Phaedrus gave classic expression in verse to tales which have appealed to countless generations of children and which hold their own in the modern nursery. For, as Reinach would like us to believe, our youngsters love such tales because they are unconscious totemists!⁵⁹ To read Phaedrus, therefore, is like meeting friends that everyone must know, because the stories illustrate the common experience of mankind. So, granted a judicious ability to overlook the obtrusion of a moral first or last in a fable, one never tires of The Wolf and the Lamb, The Jackdaw in Peacock's Feathers, The Lion's Share, The Ambitious Frog and the Ox, The Sham Hospitality of Fox and Stork, The Mule with the Load of Gold and the Mule with the Load of Barley, The Wolf at Large and the Dog with a Collar,⁶⁰ The Pearl in the Dung-heap, Aesop tossing Nuts or All Work and No Play, The Fox and the Sour Grapes, The Viper and the File, The Snake in the Bosom, The Forelock of Opportunity, and Old Bald-pate with the Fly or Adding Insult to Injury.⁶¹

Human realism, in fact, has been imparted to the beast-fable. Constantly forgetting that one is reading about animals, one does not care if the doings and sayings are inconsistent with the laws of physics or natural history. It matters little that a swimming dog is unlikely to see his reflexion in the water, and that cats do not habitually eat young pigs.⁶² The passions, wiles and talk of the animals are convincing because of the resemblance to mankind. In this sense, how natural it all is—how true to life! The cynical ingratitude of the bitch after borrowing shelter for herself and whelps; the mortally wounded pride of the old lion who endures a double death (bis uideor mori) when kicked by the ass; the much to be suspected outburst of sudden generosity on the part of designing persons in contrast with the staid fidelity of a watchdog; the dignified contempt wherewith the boar declines to avenge a lewd insult (inquinari nolo)—these⁶³ and many such have close parallels in actuality. Little wonder, then, that contemporaries not infrequently beheld themselves under the disguise. So entirely apposite were many stories that, as already seen, offence was sure to be taken where none was meant.

Without being among the great in achievement, Phaedrus yet exhibits the genuine attitude of a man of letters. He is intensely sensitive to unfriendly criticism; he repeatedly makes retorts on cavillers;⁶⁴ he is proud of literary qualities like brevity;⁶⁵ believes he has his place as the introducer of a new form in Roman literature;⁶⁶ and has confidence in the survival of his writings.⁶⁷ He takes pleasure in his vocation; for it is with obvious satisfaction that he recounts the value of literature to Simonides.⁶⁸ Yet, equipped as he was with talent and self-reliance, and likely to secure an initial recommendation from his connexion with the imperial court, he admits that he made his way with difficulty. The admission occurs in the passage where, after mentioning his birth, he avows his disdain for wealth and his devotion to poetry:

I came to birth on that Pierian hill,
Whereon the hallowed dame, Mnemosyne,
Nine times a mother, bore to Thunderer Jove
The Muses' Choir. Though almost in that school
I first saw light, though from my breast I have
Erased all lust for gain, and with fair fame
Undimmed, have set my heart on my career,
Still 'tis but grudging welcome I receive.⁶⁹

In face of opposition, however, he feels the superiority of his own unappreciated pearls: it is like throwing them on a dunghill to offer fables to unresponsive readers:

The tardy acceptance of his writings during his lifetime seems in harmony with the silence regarding him in the classics at large. Seneca, writing about A.D. 43, pro nounces the fable to be work 'unattempted by the Roman genius.'⁷⁰ Possibly in this remark he may definitely have the Greek Phaedrus in mind, though he does not name him. Quintilian, while he finds a place for fable in his scheme of education,⁷¹ does not mention Phaedrus. Before Avianus, who wrote in the fourth century, the single allusion generally cited as applicable to him, namely Martial's an aemulatur improbi iocos Phaedri? is not beyond dispute. While it in appropriate in Martial to call the fables ioci, as their author does, the epithet improbus, if it seriously means 'shameless,' is remarkably inappropriate as a fair description of our moralist, even when we grant that he can be coarse. It is just possible that the coarsest in him has not survived; but unless one adopts a supposition of this sort, there is a temptation to fancy that the Phaedrus whom Martial meant may have been some obscure writer of mimes.⁷² More justice was done to his reputation in later centuries when abridgements were in vogue; and in the Middle Ages he may be said to have had his revenge.

This is a suitable point at which to note briefly the later fortunes of fable in the Roman world. It was not till after the time of Augustus that a group of Indian beaststories with ethical applications was brought to Alexandria by a Cingalese embassy. Translated as the 'Libyan Fables' of one 'Kybises,' they had pithy conclusions pointing the moral to be deduced. In the days of Marcus Aurelius, a rhetor at his court, Nicostratus, formed a corpus out of the old Greek collection of Demetrius and the Libyan collection of 'Kybises.' This body of fable from the nearer and the farther East was next turned into Greek choliambics by Valerius Babrius, about whose date there has been considerable dispute, but who probably wrote before the end of the second century after Christ. It is the Libyan element, rather than the Aesopic, which predominates among the forty-two fables done into Latin elegiacs by Flavius Avianus in the fourth century; and his uninspiring verses close the ancient records on this subject. With the later and more fascinating history of fable we are not concerned, except to observe that in the Middle Ages it was Phaedrus who was especially read and paraphrased among fabulists. About eighty of his fables were collected in prose, perhaps in the ninth century,⁷³ and went under the name of 'Romulus.' The prose collection which once belonged to the monk Ademar of Chabannes or Chabanais,⁷⁴ and was possibly written by himself early in the eleventh century, possesses the historic interest of preserving some portions of Phaedrus otherwise lost; elsewhere among its contents are prose versions of existent verse fables in Phaedrus with but slight alterations.⁷⁵

The outstanding qualities of the style and art of Phaedrus are his direct simplicity of language and unpretentious neatness of phrase and line. On brevity, as already indicated, he plumed himself, though on occasion he is halfapologetic over it. Brevity, we know, is not necessarily simple; but his brevity is. With him, condensation was not purchased at the expense of clearness; for his style is on the whole flowing and easy. Its natural turns, which seem to grow out of the nature of the subject, are at once appropriate to his animal speakers and a contrast to the artificial rhetoric beginning to inundate Latin literature. At the same time, he was aware of this increasing tendency towards the high-flown and the far-fetched; for in a passage⁷⁶ where he makes telling retort on the hypercriticism launched at him, he composes a specimen of the tragic manner, and proclaims the impossibility of pleasing a fastidious Cato⁷⁷ of a critic by means of either fabellae (fables) or fabulae (plays). It is, then, vastly to his credit that, while he thus affords proof of what he could do in aping tragic diction, he yet so avoids inflation and preciosity as to attain a strict and almost Attic sobriety of style comparable with the clear-cut and restrained work of Terence in the drama or of Caesar in prose. His use of antithesis, which is not tediously overdone, may be cited in illustration of his restraint; e.g.,

Strangers he gulls, but friends make fun of him
(Ignotos fallit, notis est derisui, I. xi. 2)

Bores to themselves, a loathsome tribe to others
(Sibi molesta et aliis odiosissima, II. v. 4).

In a certain fondness for abstract⁷⁸ turns of expression one remarks a resemblance to the style of Valerius Maximus, and therefore a symptom of the movement in the language towards Silver Latinity. In general, despite his foreign origin, the Latin of Phaedrus obeys correct canons, though there are occasional vulgarisms and instances of loose grammatical usage.⁷⁹

He does not possess in any remarkable degree the artist's eye. The picturesque may be said to begin and end for him in a few vivid synonyms like 'long-ears' (auritulus) for an ass, 'the wizened one' (retorridus) for an old mouse, or in epithets like those in 'branching antlers' (ramosa cornua) of a stag, or 'lightning-flashing tusks' of the wild boar (fulmineis dentibus).⁸⁰ He may pause to give a condensed description; but it is rare to find anything so full in this kind as Juno's summary of the peacock's advantages:

Thou bear'st the palm for beauty as for size;
The gleam of emerald illumes thy neck;
A tail thou spread'st with brilliant plumes begemmed.⁸¹

Nor does he trouble, we have seen, to keep true to nature; except in wonderland, cow, she-goat and sheep make a curious triple alliance for a lion on a carnivorous expedition. Really, Phaedrus is in Roman fashion bent upon moralising so that his readers shall reap benefit (utilitatem);⁸² and this domination of the moral is one factor which prevents any free and accurate study of animals. Not one of the world's mighty sages, he has rather a thin philosophy to propound; and on his narrow stage the beasts sometimes display no more vitality than wooden marionettes. This renders his psychology too naïve—his animals reason in a manner patently subordinate to the intended lesson. The doves, for instance, harried by the kite, see at last the error of their ways and acknowledge the justice of their punishment:⁸³ and the outcome has a smack suggestive of a death-bed repentance in accord with the distinctly self-regarding morality inculcated.

Although the parallel of La Fontaine's fables must cross the mind insistently during a study of Phaedrus, yet any elaborate comparison between the two would be futile. There is so much that is incommensurate. The claim of Phaedrus had been to polish in iambic verse the prose of 'Aesop'; and it may be granted that his fables have more picturesque turns than their Greek originals. But they pale before the masterpieces of the French writer. Phaedrus does not possess the knowledge, the penetration, the dramatic power, the sense of style—he has not, in short, the genius which makes La Fontaine a great poet at a great epoch, and par excellence the thinker and artist among fabulists. The Russian fabulist Kriloff, who is manifestly under obligations both to La Fontaine and to Aesop, may in one striking way be said to continue the Phaedrian tradition; for, whereas La Fontaine's fables are impersonal, Kriloff's had a frequent and pointed bearing on affairs and circumstances in the Russia of his time.

The metre of Phaedrus is the iambic senarius throughout. It is not the iambic line favoured by Catullus, Bibaculus or Horace, but broadly that employed by the ancient comic writers. He may have been influenced by Publilius Syrus, to whose sententious manner the moral of a fable often bears resemblance. We meet with a different type of iambic trimeter in Seneca, who, owing to Ovidian influence,⁸⁴ composed lines unlike the early Roman tragic iambic; for neatness and monotony have in the Senecan iambic replaced the strong rough lines of Ennius, Pacuvius and Accius. But it is the ancient iambic line, as used in comedy by Plautus and Terence, which descends lineally to Phaedrus. Only, while he may offend a fastidious ear by admitting spondees in the second and the fourth feet, he is generally careful to avoid overloading his verse with long syllables and to secure variety of sound by occasionally introducing three-syllabled feet⁸⁵ and by attention to elision.

Regarding the fables as a whole, Mackail contends that 'their chief interest is as the last survival of the urbanus sermo in Latin poetry';⁸⁶ but perhaps this view too exclusively estimates them from the linguistic and stylistic side. Slight from the standpoint of purely literary merit, the fables of Phaedrus do however possess considerable historical importance. They hold their place in the chronicle of European fable-literature; they form a chapter in the book of Rome's debt to Greek models; they contain a significant amount of original material, with a virile bearing upon contemporary life; and, farther, it is not the least of their claims to attention that they wielded a potent influence in medieval times, and, if only as one of those lesson-books which sink deep into the memory, they have been beloved by many generations of readers.

Notes

¹ III. prol. 17 sqq.; L. Schwabe, Rh.M. xxxix (1884) p. 476, proves against E. Wölfflin (ibid. p. 157) that the lines are meant literally.

² III. epil, 33-35:

'Ego, quondam legi quam puer sententiam
"Palam muttire plebeio piaculumst."
Dum sanitas constabit, pulchre meminero.'

Line 34 is from the Telephus of Ennius.

³ III. prol. 27-28; IV. vii. 6 sqq.; IV. xxii (xxiii) and xxv (xxvi).

⁴ Avianus, praef.: 'Phaedrus etiam partem aliquam quinque in libellos resoluit.'

⁵ Plessis, Poésie lat. p. 484. Ellis (Fables of Ph., Inaug. lect, Lond. 1894, p. 3) thinks the rare by-form 'Phaeder' less likely.

⁶ The emperor seems to be referred to as alive in II. v. 7, where he is 'Caesar Tiberius'; contrast 'a diuo Augusto' of Augustus, III. x. 39.

⁷ Ellis, op. cit. p. 2. Bk. I is more strictly 'Aesopian' or Hellenic; Bk. II obviously introduces Roman matter.

⁸ III. epil. 15-19; III. i. 7.

⁹ L. Havet (ed. of 1895, p. 242 ff.) favours later dates for his birth and for chronology of the works. According to his arguments—which present difficulties—Book III was written under Claudius, IV under Nero, and V as late as Vespasian's time. Havet's hypothesis depends primarily upon his transposition from Book III of the second part of the prologue (11. 33-63) to the epilogue of Book II.

¹⁰ III. epil. 1; IV. prol. 1-10.

¹¹ V. x. 9-10. That Phaedrus here alluded to his own advanced years was the view of Ribbeck, Gesch. der röm. Dichtung iii. p. 27.

¹²E.g. II. prol. II. Havet claims that prol. and epil. of Bk. III were addressed to an unknown Illius at a date not earlier than A.D. 43.

¹³ F. Bücheler, Rh.M. xxxvii (1882) pp. 333 ff.

¹⁴ IV. epil. 4: 'uir sanctissime'; prol. 17-19:

'Mihi parta laus est, quod tu, quod similes tui
Vestras in chartas uerba transfertis mea
Dignumque longa iudicatis memoria.'

¹⁵ V. x. 9-10:

'Quod fuimus, laudas, si iam damnas quod sumus:
Hoc cur, Philete, scripserim, pulchre vides,'

where the reading of P is fili te, and of R fili^e de.

¹⁶ L. Müller's ed. 1877, Introd. pp. xiii-xxxvii; Plessis, op. cit. pp. 488-491.

¹⁷ Ellis (op. cit.) gives a useful account of MSS. and early history of the text. Janelli, the editor of the 'Perottine' fables in 1811, has been supported by Cardinal Mai, Creili, Lachmann, L. Müller, Hervieux and Ribbeck in accepting their descent from Phaedrus. Ellis (op. cit. pp. 25-28) gives reasons against crediting this, and compares the impression left by these fables to that left by various imitations of Ovid, the Nux or the Consolatio ad Liuiam or the spurious poems among the Heroides.

¹⁸ For Müller's opinion of Dressler's iambic composition see his ed. of 1877, pp. xxxviii-xxxix.

¹⁹ I. prol. 6.

²⁰ The account of trees favoured by different deities in III. xvii is not an example; but in Fab. Nouae (Müller's ed., no. xiii), the oak admits to the ash that they were justly cut down because they had ordered the wild olive to supply a man with an axe-handle.

²¹ Otto Crusius, Rh.M. xxxix (1884) p. 603; Ellis, op. cit. p. 4; cf. W. G. Rutherford, Babrius, Introd. p. xi.

²² Aul. Gell. II. xxix; Hor. Epist. I. i. 73 sqq. (the sick lion, previously in Lucilius 980 sqq. Marx); I. vii. 29 (the uolpecula that raided the bin); I. x. 34 (horse securing man's help against stag); Sat. II. vi. 79 (town mouse and country mouse).

²³ I. prol. 1-7:

'Aesopus auctor quam materiam repperit,
Hanc ego poliui uersibus senariis.
Duplex libelli dos est: quod risum mouet
Et quod prudenti uitam consilio monet.
Calumniari siquis autem uoluerit,
Quod arbores loquantur, non tantum ferae,
Fictis iocari nos meminerit fabulis.'

²⁴ II. epil. 1-2:

Aesopi ingentem (v.l. ingenio) statuam posuere Attici
Seruomque aeterna collocarunt in basi.'

Ingenio is most likely. This is one of a few cases in which N and V preserve by their reading ('Aesopi ingenio') the right tradition against the older manuscript P and the record of R. P gives 'Aesopo ingentem (m. pr. Aesopi ingento)….'

²⁵ II. epil. 8-9:

'Quod si labori fauerit Latium meo,
Plures habebit quos opponat Graeciae.'

²⁶ III. prol. 52-55.

²⁷ IV. vii. 5: 'Et in cothurnis prodit Aesopus nouis.'

²⁸ IV. xxi (xxii).

²⁹ IV. prol. II: 'Quas Aesopias non Aesopi nomino.'

³⁰ Ed. 1877, p. 98.

³¹ IV. prol. 7-8:

'Sua cuique cum sit animi cogitatio
Colorque proprius.'

³² II. prol. 8-11:

'Equidem omni cura morem seruabo senis;
Sed si libuerit aliquid interponere,
Dictorum sensus ut delectet uarietas,
Bonas in partes, lector, accipias uelim.'

³³ Bücheler, Rh.M. xxxvii (1882) p. 332.

³⁴ For these instances, see III. x; V. vii; V. v.

³⁵ IV. vi. 2: 'Historia quorum et in tabernis pingitur.'

³⁶Ardalio, ardelio, ardulio are spellings found in glossaries. Nettleship inclined to favour ardalio, Contribns. to I, at. Lexicography, Oxf. 1889, p. 267.

³⁷ II. v.

³⁸ III. prol. 33-37:

'Nunc fabularum cur sit inuentum genus
Breui docebo. Seruitus obnoxia,
Quia quae uolebat non audebat dicere,
Adfectus proprios in fabellas transtulit
Calumniamque fictis elusit iocis.'

³⁹ I. xv. 1-2:

'In principatu commutando ciuium
Nil praeter domini nomen mutant pauperes.'

⁴⁰ I. i. 14-15:

'Haec propter illos scriptast homines fabula,
Qui fictis causis innocentes opprimunt.'

⁴¹ I. xvii.

⁴² I. ii.

⁴³ I. vi. 9:

'Quidnam futurumst si crearit liberos?'

⁴⁴ III. prol. 38-43:

'Ego porro illius (sc. Aesopi) semita[m?] feci uiam,
Et cogitaui plura quam reliquerat,
In calamitatem deligens quaedam meam.
Quodsi accusator alius Seiano foret,
Si testis alius, iudex alius denique,
Dignum faterer esse me tantis malis.'

⁴⁵ III. epil. 29-35.

⁴⁶ IV. ii. 1-4:

'Ioculare tibi uidemur, et sane leui,
Dum nil habemus maius, calamo ludimus.
Sed diligenter intuere has nenias:
Quantam sub illis utilitatem reperies!'

⁴⁷ I. xv. 2.

⁴⁸ I. xxx.

⁴⁹ I. ii. 31: 'Hoc sustinete, maius ne ueniat, malum.'

⁵⁰III. prol. 49-51:

'Neque enim notare singulos mens est mihi,
Verum ipsam uitam et mores hominum ostendere.
Rem me professum dicet fors aliquis grauem.'

⁵¹ IV. xi.

'Peras imposuit luppitet nobis duas
Propriis repletam uitiis post tergum dedit,
Alienis ante pectus suspendit grauem.
Hac re uidere nostra mala non possumus;
Alii simul delinquunt, censores sumus.'

Cf. Catull. xxii. 21: 'Sed non uidemus manticae quod in tergo est.'

⁵² IV. xx(xxi). 16-26.

⁵³ IV. xvii (xviii). 9-10:

'Parce gandere oporter et sensim quert
Totam aeque uitam miscet dolor et gaudium.'

⁵⁴ III. ix: 'Vulgare amici nomen, sed rarast fides….'

⁵⁵ 1. xi, xiv, xxv; III. i.

⁵⁶ I. vii.

⁵⁷ IV. xxiii (xxiv): 'Mons parturibat, gemitus immanes ciens,' etc. Cf. Uox.A.P. 139.

⁵⁸ I. x. 9-10.

⁵⁹ S. Reinach, Orpheus, Eng. ed., 1909, p. 16.

⁶⁰ III. vii. Havet's theory (R.E.A. 1921) that this fable represents an actual dialogue in A.D. 16 between Arminius the Cheruscan warrior and his Romanised brother Flavus cannot be either proved or disproved.

⁶¹ The most famous line in Phaedrus is probably V. iii. 5:

'Iniuriae qui addideris contumeliam.'

⁶² I. iv; II. iv. Lessing in the one case and Ellis in the other criticised adversely Phaedrus's accuracy. For similar mistakes, see J. J. Hartman, De Ph.fabulis commentano, Leiden 1890.

⁶³ I. xix, xxi, xxiii, xxix.

⁶⁴E.g. II. epil. 10-14; III. ix. 4; W.prol. 15; IV. vii; IV. xxi (xxii).

⁶⁵E.g. II. prol. 12; IV. epil. 7. III. χ closes with explanation that the story has been fully told because his brevity has offended some.

⁶⁶ II. epil. 1-9.

⁶⁷ III. prol. 32; IV. epil. 5-6:

'Particulo, chartis nomen uicturum meis,
Latinis dum manebit pretium litteris.'

⁶⁸ IV. xxii (xxiii) and xxv (xxvi).

⁶⁹ III. prol. 17: 'Ego, quern Pierio mater enixast iugo,' etc.

⁷⁰ III. xii.

⁷⁰ Sen. Ad Polyb. viii. 3 … 'fabellas quoque et Aesopeos logos, intemptatum Romanis ingeniis opus.' Most scholars take this to imply either an ignorance or an ignoring of Phaedrus on Seneca's part. But Seneca was writing to a Greek freedman, and remembering that Phaedrus was Greek too, he compliments his correspondent by remarking that fable writing was a sort of literary work which Romans had not tried. I have argued in C.R. xxix (1915) pp. 252-253, that there is no need to implicate Seneca in a wilful falsehood. See also J. P. Postgate who discusses (C.R. 1919, p. 19 ff.) some parallels between P. and Seneca.

⁷¹Inst. Or. I. ix. 2.

⁷² Mart. III. xx. 5. This is Friedländer's suggestion ad loc. Teuffel, 284, 3, dismisses it summarily as against probability ('ohne Wahrscheinlichkeit'). But Plessis, Poésie lat., p. 487, agrees with Friedländer. Ellis (op. cit. p. 8) takes Martial to mean the fabulist, and improbi to allude to fables such as I. xxix; III. i; III. iii; IV. xv (xvi); IV. xviii (xix). G. Thiele, in Philol. lxx, 1911, pp. 539-548, proposes to read in Martial 'an aemulatur improbi logos Phaedri?' taking logos=apologos (cf. Sen. Ad Polyb. viii. 3) and improbi='audacious' applied to political allusions in the fables.

⁷³ The process of abridgement, mutilation and transformation of Phaedrus took place between the time when Avianus must have read the fables in verse-form (i.e. with intervals marked between lines), and the ninth or tenth century, when the Pithoeanus has them without any mark to distinguish them from prose. Ellis (op. cit. pp. 9-10) argues that the abridgement 'may have been executed in the 5th or 6th cent., and that the gradually declining knowledge of ancient language and metre, which the unsettled state of Europe produced, caused the iambics of Phaedrus to be written in prose. As prose they were probably read by the Carlovingian scholars.'

⁷⁴ 'Ex libris bonae memoriae Ademari grammatici' is part of a note in the MS., which was written in the Abbey of St. Martial de Limoges.

⁷⁵ The influence of Phaedrus, and especially the strong influence of the Romulus collection, upon the MS. of Ademar, are discussed by G. Thiele, Der illustrierte lateinische Aesop (Codices Graeci et Lat., suppl. iii, Leiden, 1905); cf. C. M. Zander, 'De generibus et libris paraphrasium Phaedrianarum,' Acta Univ. Lund, xxxiii (1897); Phaedrus Solutus, 1921.

⁷⁶ IV. vii.

⁷⁷ IV. vii. 21-22. Cato is, of course, the type of the austere literary judge, e.g. in the Petronian epigram, 132:

'Quid me constricta spectatis fronte, Catones?'

⁷⁸E.g. I. xiii. 12: 'Turn demum ingemuit corui deceptus stupor';

II. v. 23: 'Turn sic iocata est tanti maiestas ducis';

III. v. 9: 'Sed spes fefellit inpudentem audaciam';

cf. the personification in I. xxvii. 6:

'Poenas ut sanctae Religioni penderei';

and in IV. xi. 4:

'Repente uocem sancta misit Religio.'

⁷⁹ On vulgarisms, see H. von Sassen, De Phaedri sermone, Marb. 1911, p. 8. 'Persuasus' occurs III. v. 8 (cf. I. viii. 7) but see supra, p. 66 n. 3.

⁸⁰ I. xi. 6; IV. ii. 16; I. xii. 5; I. xxi. 5. The epithstfulmineus, applied to dens or os, is shared with Ovid and Statius.

⁸¹ III. xviii. 6-8:

'Sed forma uincis, uincis magnitudine;
Nitor smaragdi collo praefulget tuo
Pictisque plumis gemmeam caudam explicas.'

⁸² IV. ii. 4. A case in point is the threefold lesson, each as it were, numbered and labelled, from the story of the thief who stole an altar-lamp, IV. xi….

⁸³ I. xxxi. 13: 'merito plectimur.'

⁸⁴ Butler, Post-Aug. P. pp. 70-71.

⁸⁵ His usage with regard to various feet is discussed in Müller's ed., 1877, pp. ix-xiii. Consult also the careful essay on metre and prosody in Havet's ed. of 1895.

⁸⁶Lat. LH., 1895, p. 160.