Phaedrus (fabulist)

Gaius Julius Phaedrus (ˈfiːdrəs; Φαῖδρος; Phaîdros), or Phaeder (c. 15 BC–c. 50 AD) was a 1st-century AD Roman fabulist and the first versifier of a collection of Aesop's fables into Latin. Nothing is recorded of his life except for what can be inferred from his poems, and there was little mention of his work during late antiquity. It was not until the discovery of a few imperfect manuscripts during and following the Renaissance that his importance emerged, both as an author and in the transmission of the fables. The poet describes himself as born in the Pierian Mountains, perhaps in Pydna, and names the Thracian musicians Linus and Orpheus as his countrymen. The inscriptions and subscriptions in the manuscript tradition identify him as a freedman of Augustus. Some have inferred from these data that Phaedrus was brought to Rome in his childhood as a slave following the Thracian campaign of L. Calpurnius Piso. Whether in Rome or elsewhere, Phaedrus studied Latin literature in his youth, as he quotes a line from Ennius saying that he read it when he was a boy. When he had published his first two books of fables, he was subjected to a trial in which he says Sejanus was accuser, witness, and judge. Although it is not clear what punishment the poet suffered, the poet pleads with a certain Eutychus to intercede on his behalf in the prologue to his third book. In the epilogue of the third book, the poet describes himself as in advanced middle age, and the final poem of Phaedrus' fifth book implies that he had reached old age. There is no external evidence by which to judge whether the poet spoke truthfully of himself, and scholars have assigned different degrees of significance to the biographical hints contained in the poems. Attilio de Lorenzi's biography Fedro is reviewed by Perry as a "consistent and convincing all-round picture of the man" with "nothing unreasonable or improbable in any of the author's conclusions," but derided by another reviewer as "a romance" born of "de Lorenzi's ingenious imagination" which is "entertaining to read, but not always easy to believe.