Phaedrus
15 BCE - 50 CE
Phaedrus—or perhaps Phaeder—is the first author we know to have produced a published collection of Aesopic fables meant to be read one after another, purely for literary enjoyment. Not much can be said with certainty about his life or person. A testimony in the principle manuscript reports that he was a freedman of Augustus; everything else we can hope to ascertain about Phaedrus and his life comes from his own work. He was Greek speaking and claimed a Greek literary heritage (Phaed. 3 prologue). If the prologue to his third book can be taken at face-value, he was “all but born in a school” near the Pierian Mount. He published his first book under Tiberius (Phaed. 2.5) and was not successful during his own lifetime. In his writings he complains of endless poverty and an icy reception in Roman literary circles (he is not mentioned in our extant authors until Marital, 3.20.5). He was indicted by Sejanus (Phaed. 3 prologue 40ff). We don't know the precise nature of this suit, but the outcome seems to have been against the poet. Despite persecution, the self-proclaimed unpopular pauper wrote into his old-age, producing five books of “fabulous” verse. He died most probably in the middle of the 1st C CE.
Works by this author
The Aesopic Fables | Phaedrus
Phaedri Augusti Liberti Fabularum Aesopiarum
Phaedrus' corpus of five books is the first known collection of fables in antiquity meant to be read and enjoyed on its own literary merit. Previously, such volumes were primarily reference books for rhetorical use (see the Aisopeia of Demetrius of Phaleron, 4th C BCE; cf. Αἰσωπείων ἀ, Diog. Laert. 5.80; Phaedrus himself presumably made use of one such book, if not that of Demetrius). This work, like that of Babrius, was written in verse, perhaps as a way to set it apart from earlier collections that were designed to be mined for material and influence, and the meters no...