The Fables of Phaedrus

Description

Phaedrus’ The Fables of Phaedrus is a concise series of tales in a book form, in literature or poetry, which has as its major feature the purpose of giving a moral lesson the moral of a story, indirectly or, more customarily, clearly expressed. Although the new notion of fable is that it must have animals or lifeless things as personifications – a thinking maintained by the stories of popular fabulists including Aesop and La Fontaine – Phaedrus, the most significant Latin fabulist, is inventive in his works. Though most of his fables do imply animals or things supposing dialogue, he also has several short literatures of people, writing tales that are likely to the contemporary readers more as short narratives than fables.

Gaius Julius Phaedrus, Roman fabulist, was a Latin writer and versifier of Aesop’s fables. He was born in Pydna of Roman Macedonia and flourishing in the regimes of Augustus, Tiberius, and somewhat probably also those of Caligula and Claudius. He is known as the first author to Latinize all fables, restating in senarii, a diverse iambic metre, the Aesopic fables in Greek literature.

The writing dates and issuance are indefinite, though Seneca, transcribing from AD 41 to 43, aims to Claudius’ freedman Polybius to undertake his skills to Latinizing Aesop, which proposes Seneca knew nothing of Phaedrus, suggesting a terminus post quem.

Phaedrus’ metre is plain and his fables incline to the terse. He rewrites Greek stock samples – including the frogs wishing a king from Jupiter, yet sprinkles with mainly Roman samples – Tiberius and the servant, Augustus and the accused wife, the piper Prince. Attentiveness in his writing influenced a contemporary follower, la Fontaine, and many thoughtful academic studies have risen ever since. He is cited by Martial and by Avianus; Prudentius might have browsed over him, for he copies one of his works.
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