Phaedrus (fabulist)

Gaius Julius Phaedrus (/ˈfiːdrəs/; Greek: Φαῖδρος; fl. first century AD), Roman fabulist, was a Latin author and versifier of Aesop's fables.

His place of birth is unknown. Traditional biographical reconstructions on the basis of the few autobiographical references within the surviving text tend toward his being a Thracian slave, born in Pydna of Roman Macedonia and alive in the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, and quite possibly also those of Caligula and Claudius. He is recognized as the first writer to Latinize entire books of fables, retelling in senarii, a loose iambic metre, the Aesopic tales in Greek prose.

According to his own statement (3.prol.), he claims to have been born on the Pierian Mountain in Macedonia. However, the reliability of this is highly suspect. Phaedrus introduces the work (1.prol.) with a reminder telling us that he 'speaks in jest of things which never happened'. Whilst the Latin heading of the first book states he was a slave of the emperor and freed (liberti Augusti), there is nothing to suggest it was by Augustus.

He claims to have incurred the wrath of (a) Sejanus, the powerful minister of Tiberius (3.prol.). The suggestion that the third book, which is dedicated to Eutychus, dates the work to the reign of Gaius on the basis of identification with the famous charioteer and favorite, is not water-tight. (Eutychus good-fortune is more probably, like most names in Phaedrus, including his own (shiny), a pun.)

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