Phaedrus Caius Iulius

Phaedrus, Gaius Julius (c.15 BC—c. AD 50), Thracian slave who came to Rome and became a freedman in the household of Augustus, the author (in Latin) of a collection of fables in five books containing some hundred stories, published probably in the thirties of the first century AD. There is also an appendix of another thirty-two fables, probably also by Phaedrus. The collection includes fables proper, a number of anecdotes (e.g. about Aesop, Socrates, and Menander), and defences of the author against detractors. The fables are based on those of Aesop and on beast-stories from other sources which had come to be attributed to Aesop. They are written in verse, in iambic senarii (see METRE, LATIN 2), and their object is two-fold, to give advice and to entertain. They are generally serious or satirical, dealing with the injustices of life and social and political evils, but occasionally they are light and amusing. In general they express patient resignation. Phaedrus observed in the...

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