PHÆDRUS AND BABRIUS.
'United, yet divided, twain at once--
sit two kings of Fable on one throne.'
COWPER: _The Task (altered)_.
Phædrus, who wrote the fables of Æsop in Latin iambics, and added
others of his own, was born at the very source of poetic inspiration,
on Mount Pierius, near to the Pierian spring, the seat of the Muses,
in Thrace, at that time a portion of the Roman province of Macedonia,
and of which Octavius, the father of Augustus Cæsar, was Proconsul,
during the last century before the Christian era. Like Æsop, he too was
a slave in early youth, but being taken to Rome, he was manumitted by
Augustus, and occupied a place in the household of that Emperor. Here
he acquired the pure Latinity of his style, and in later years wrote
the well-known fables in the collection that bears his name. His fables
are in five books, and were published during the reign of Tiberius and
subsequent emperors.
In the prologue to his third book, addressed to Eutychus,[38] he thus
alludes to his birthplace, and disavows all mercenary aims in his
literary pursuits:
'Me--whom a Grecian mother bore
On Hill Pierian, where of yore
Mnemosyne in love divine
Brought forth to Jove the tuneful Nine.
Though sprung where genius reigned with art,
I grubb'd up av'rice from my heart,
And rather for applause than pay,
Embrace the literary way--
Yet as a writer and a wit,
With some abatements they admit.
What is his case then, do you think,
Who toils for wealth nor sleeps a wink,
Preferring to the pleasing pain
Of composition, sordid gain?
But hap what will (as Sinon said
When to King Priam he was led),
I book the third shall now fulfil,
With Æsop for my master still,
Which book I dedicate to you
As both to worth and honour due.
Pleased, if you read; if not, content,
As conscious of a sure event,
That these my fables shall remain,
And after-ages entertain.'[39]
His object, as he declares, was to expose vice and folly; in pursuing
it he did not escape persecution, for Sejanus, the arbitrary minister
of Tiberius (who had now succeeded to the imperial purple), took
mortal offence at certain of the apologues which he suspected applied
to himself, and, 'informer, witness, judge and all,' laid the iron
hand of power heavy upon the fabulist. Phædrus, whose early years of
slavery had left no taint of servility upon his character, was too
independent to stoop to insolent power, and resented the treatment to
which he was subjected. Thus beset, and probably largely owing to this
cause, his last years were spent in poverty. Amidst the infirmities of
age he compares himself to the old hound in his last apologue, which
being chastised by his master for his feebleness in allowing the boar
to escape, replied, 'Spare your old servant! It was the power, not the
will, that failed me. Remember rather what I was than abuse me for what
I am.' A lesson which even at the present day may sometimes find its
application. Phædrus prophesied his own immortality as an author, and
his boast was that whilst Æsop invented, he (Phædrus) perfected.
Babrius,[40] a Latin, did for the Æsopian fable, in Greek choliambics,
what Phædrus, a Greek, accomplished for them in Latin iambics. He
is believed to have lived in the third century A.D., and to have
composed his fables in his quality of tutor to Branchus, the young
son of the Emperor Alexander Severus.[41] His collection of Æsopian
fables in two books was known to ancient writers, who refer to him
and quote his apologues, but, like other literary treasures, it was
lost during the Middle Ages. Early in the seventeenth century, Isaac
Nicholas Neveletus, a Swiss, published (1610) an edition of the fables
of Æsop, containing not only those embraced in the work of Planudes,
but additional fables from MSS. in the Vatican Library, and some from
Aphthonius and Babrius. He further expressed the opinion that the
latter was the earliest collector and writer of the Æsopian fables in
Greek. Francis Vavassor, a French Jesuit, followed with comments on
Babrius on the same lines; so also another Frenchman, Bayle, in his
'Dictionnaire Historique'; Thomas Tyrwhitt and Dr. Bentley in England,
and Francisco de Furia in Italy, also espoused the idea first suggested
by Neveletus, and adduced further proofs in support of it. Singularly
enough, the accuracy of the forecast of these scholars was established
by the discovery in 1840, by M. Minoides Menas, a Greek, at the Convent
of St. Laura on Mount Athos, of a veritable copy of Babrius in Greek
choliambic verse. The transcript of Menas was first published in Paris
in 1844. The first English edition was edited by Sir George Cornewall
Lewis in the original Greek text, with Latin notes, and afterwards
(1860) translated into English by the Rev. James Davies, M.A., and they
now form the most trustworthy version of the Æsopian fables.
FOOTNOTES:
[38] 'The Charioteer of Caligula,' Bücheler.
[39] From the translation of the fables of Phædrus into English verse
by Christopher Smart, A.M.
[40] Sometimes spelt 'Gabrias.'
[41] Jacobs: 'History of the Æsopic Fable,' p. 22.