Phædrus

Phædrus (or PHÆDER, according to some scholars), author of a translation of Æsop's fables in Latin verse, was, by his own account, a Macedonian, who from his childhood was imbued with Greek culture. While still young he came to Italy, and in Rome or some other city attended school where he studied Ennius, whom he quotes in the epilogue to his third book. From the title of the entire work, Phædri Augusti Liberti Fabulae, it appears that from a slave he became the freedman of Augustus, either the first of that name or his successor Tiberius. Under the reign of this latter he published the first two books of his fables, but his biting though veiled allusions to the tyranny of the emperor (in the fable of the frogs asking a king) and to his minister Sejanus (in that of the jay dressed in peacock's plumage) caused him to be hated at court, then accused, and finally condemned—to what punishment is unknown. On the death of Sejanus he resumed publication, and dedicated his third book to one Eutychus, freedman of the Emperor Claudius, courting his protection from enemies and accusers. In the last years of his life, to which the fourth and fifth books belong, he seems to have regained liberty of pen as well as of person. He died probably at an advanced age. Phædrus was more than he claims to be—a reproducer of Æsop; he invented fables of his own, and gave an Æsopic turn to contemporary events. That the five books traditionally ascribed to him are his cannot without large deductions be maintained—not a few of them may be of the same authorship as the Fabulae Novæ commonly added as an appendix to the five books, and found in an anthology attributed to Nicola Perotti, a scholar of the 15th century. The merits of Phædrus are his clear succinct narrative, his pure Latinity, and his skill in versification. The editions of Bentley, Dressel, Orelli, and finally of Müller have been ably gleaned by his latest and most helpful editor Ramorino (Turin, 1884).