henderson j - 1999 - phaedrus' fables the original corpus

PHAEDRUS' FABLES: THE ORIGINAL CORPUS

BY

JOHN HENDERSON

Phaedrus is a Latin author not infrequendy referred to, but rarely read through. The edition most used by English speakers, the Loeb of B.E. Perry, includes him with Babrius, in the green livery of the Greek series. This is not just a victory for the alphabet over chronol- ogy, but an indication that Phaedrus attracts readers as an important repertory for 'Fables in the Aesopic tradition'.1) Outside Italy, where a respectable volume of scholarship continues to be gener- ated, Phaedrus cannot claim a place on the canon of Latin Literature, and few cultural-historical projects have found his verses (iambic smani) demanding attention.2) How many who come his way, most likely on the trail of Aesop, regard the textuality (language, verse- form, context, authorial disposition) of the Fabulae?*) The purpose of this article is to sketch out the original extent and nature of the

corpus Phaedrianum (below, section 4). Phaedrus, freedman of Augustus, whose floruit was under Tiberius,

produced five books, the earliest extant collection of Aesopica.4) These presented a series of separate anthologies over a number of

1) B.E. Perry (ed.), Babrius and Phaedrus (Cambridge, MASS 1965): in the indis- pensable check-list, with full and accurate descriptions, of R.W. Lamb, Annales Phaedriani. Rough Notes towards a Bibliography of Phaedrus (Lowestoft 1995, hereafter referred to as 'Lamb'), this is p. 57, no. 600. Perry's now canonical (if incomplete) tabulation of fables is referred to below as Aes.

2) But cf. W.M. Bloomer, Latinity and Literary Society at Rome (Philadelphia 1997), 73-109. Surveys of scholarship: H.MacL. Currie, Phaedrus thefabutist, ANRW 11.32.1 (1978), 497-513; G.B. Conte, Latin Literature: A History (Baltimore 1994), 433-5, ? marginal poet'; M. von Albrecht, A History of Roman Literature (Leiden 1997), 2, 1002-7.

3) Weighty specialist scholarship of course exists on these topics (though scarcely any major proposal has convinced anyone but its proposer): e.g. M. Nojgaard, La

fable antique, II: Les grands fabutistes (Copenhagen 1967); F. Rodr?guez Adrados, Historia de la f?bula greco-latina (Madrid 1979-87), 1-3, esp. 2, 125-71, 'Fedro'; N. Holzberg Die antike Fabel. Eine Einf?hrung (Darmstadt 1993), esp. 43-56. But this work has not recovered Phaedrus as an author with a readership and critical contestation.

4) Aug. lib.: Mss PR indpit, etc. Tiberian: diuo Augusto, 3.10.39, Caesar Tiberius, 2.5.7, Seiano, 3.ProlA\. Five books: Ms RVl explicit; Avianus, Fables, Preface.

? Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 1999 Mnemosyne, Vol. LII, Fase. 3

PHAEDRUS' FABLES: THE ORIGINAL CORPUS 309

years, into (something approaching) old age.5) Dedicatees are acquired, and shuffled.6) The writer's dramatization of his undertaking is developed through the successive prefaces and postscripts.7) The nucleus of the corpus is preserved in Ms ? (with the testimonia to its lost twin R).8) AU (except hyperactive) editors since Brotier present as

5) Stated at 3.Epil.\6, olim senio debilem; indicated in authorially appropriated 'morals': the old woman, 3.1.7, the old hound, 5.10.10.

6) No addressees for books 1 and 2; then, Eutychus: 3.Prol.2; Paraculo: 4./W.10 and Ep?.h; Philetus (?): 5.10.10.

7) Esp. 3.Epil.\-\7. vs. 4./W.1-3; Epil.\-3, b.Prol.2. 8) P: Codex Pithoeanus, Pierpont Morgan M. 906: ninth century Carolingian minus-

cule in scriptum continua, with titles added: C.E. Finch, The Morgan Manuscript of Phaedrus, AJPh 92 (1971), 301-7, O. Zwierlein, Der Codex Pithoeanus des Phaedrus in der Pierpont Morgan library, RhM 113 (1970), 91-3. On the editio princeps, P. Pithou, Phaedri Augusti Liberti Fabularum Aesopiarum Ubri (Quinqu? (Troyes 1596) = Lamb 3 f., no. 1; on Pithou: ibid., 4.

R: Codex (Sancii Remiga) Remensis, destroyed by fire at Rheims Abbey in 1774. Collations: Rw: J. Sirmond, in: N. Rigault, Phaedri Augusti Liberti Fabularum Aesopiarum Libri Quwque (Paris 1617, 1630) = Lamb 6, no. 10; R1*: M. Gude, in: P. Burmann, Phaedri Augusti Liberti Fabularum Aesopiarum Libri Quinqu? (Amsterdam 1698) = Lamb 11 f., no. 73; RRo: D. Roche, as discovered in the Biblioth?que de l'Universit?, Paris by E. Ch?telain, Un nouveau document sur le Codex Remensis de Ph?dre, RPh 11 (1887), 81-8; RVl: Dom. Vincent, librarian of Rheims Abbey, as marginalia in the school edition published by Widow Brocas, Phaedri Augusti liberti Fabularum Aesopiarum Libri Quinqu? (Paris 1743) = Lamb 24, no. 190: now known through the correc- tions made by J. Berger de Xivrey, Phaedri Augusti Liberti Fabularum Aesopiarum Libros Quinqu?... edidit (Paris 1830) = Lamb 44, no. 423.

D: P. Danielis Schedae, Vatican Codex Reg. Lat. 1616, a ninth/tenth century parch- ment fragment from St. Beno?t-sur-Loire, with 1.11.2-13, 12.1, 17.1-21.10 written in verses, and titles independent of PR: cf. C.E. Finch, Notes on the Fragment of Phaedrus in Reg. Lat. 1616, CPh 66 (1971), 190-1.

N: Codex Neapolitans IV F 58, Codex Perottinus. c. 1465-70. Disastrously waterlogged and progressively deteriorating, multiply collated. This is the autograph anthology of Perotti, Bishop of Siponto: Nicolai Perotti Epitome fabellarum Esopi Auieni [sic] et Phaedri ad Pyrrhum Perottum fratris filium adulescentem suauissimum: of the 157 poems (one written out twice), 32 are fables known from books '2 to 5* (i.e. 2.6-Epil; 3.1-8, 10-9; 4.21-3, 25-6; 5.1-5; for his proem, Perotti appropriated 3.Prol.30, 31-7, 4./W.15-9, 5.Prol.8-9); 32 are the otherwise lost Phaedriana we call the Appendix Perottina (including two fragments; but 8 of these pieces are represented, in diluted form, from the prose paraphrasts); 36 are fables from Avianus' collection of forty- two; 57 are miscellaneous poems. The ingredients are thoroughly jumbled, though some signs of corresponsion with the order in PR survive (in the sequences 3.4- 7, 5.2-4; conspectus in L. Havet, Phaedri Augusti Liberti Fabularum Aesopiarum Libri Quinqu? [Paris 1895] = Lamb 52, no. 530, 287 f.). Perotti deliberately 'stream- lined' his texts, taken from a lost codex more complete than PR. As can be proved by comparison between poems common to PR and NV, App is incorrigibly inac- curate (and metrically abused). See esp. S. Boldrini, Fedro e Perotti. Ricerche di storia della tradizione (Urbino 1990), for both the App, and for Perotti.

310 JOHN HENDERSON

virtually, or largely, complete books 1 {ProL + 31 fables), 3 (Prol. + 19 + Epil.\ and 4 {ProL + 26 + EpiL); but 2 {ProL + 8 + ?/>*7.) and 5 {ProL + 9 + 5.10 for quasi-?/>?/.) as ruinously depleted.9) This arrangement is, however, a short solution to a Gordian knot, which deserves to be recognized as such (section 1 below). Moreover, two sources supply further materials lost from the direct tradition: the so-called Appendix Perottina, and the several Mediaeval prose paraphrases of Phaedrus. Both must contribute to our overall picture (sections 2-3).

1. Evidence for book-divisions consists in the lay-out of Mss P(R), whose rubrics to identical contents disagree:

UB'FABULARUM FEDRI AUGUSn UBERTI UB FABUVRU

{FEDRI ?????? UBERTI ?BER FABULARUM, RRo) X.ProL, 1.1-31, PHAEDRI AUCUBERn UB.SECUMDUS.WCIPIT ?BER TER- 77?/5 FELICITER {PHAEDRI AUG.I1B.SECUNDUS WCIPIT, RGu; PHAEDRI ?????? UBERTI ?BER SECUNDUS, RVi) 2.ProL, 2.1-9; 3.ProL, 3.1-19, PHAEDRIAUG.UBERTI.UBER III EXPL.WCIPIT ?BER Uli

{PHAEDRI AUaUBERTI UB III EXPUCIT, INCIPIT ?BER IIII, RVi) 4.1-26; 3.EpiL; 4./Vo/.; 5.1-5; \.EpiL\ b.ProL, 5.6-10, {PHAEDRI AUG.UBERTI ?BER QULNTUS EXPUCIT FEUCI- TER, RVi).

Editors discount the rubrics in ? as incoherent and confused, and

(not without risk) accept those reported for R. The assumption is then made that no serious jumbling of poems has occurred, even in stretches which show up sure cases of incorrect series.

The traditional pis aller builds on the following data: that 3.ProL addresses Eutychus and introduces 'the third book' (w. 2, 29); '3.EpiL' carries neither addressee nor self-positioning, but precedes 44./??/.' in the paradosis; 4.ProL addresses Particulo and ushers in 'the fourth book' (w. 10, 14); 'A.EpiL' addresses Particulo (v. 5);

V: Codex Vat. Lat. (Urbin.) 368: a sloppy but well-preserved late fifteenth century copy of N, possibly at one remove: Boldrini (op. cit.), 32-55.

9) G. Brotier, Phaedri Augusti Liberti Fabularum Aesopiarum Libri Quinqu? (Paris 1783) = Lamb 31, no. 273.


'5./V?/.' announces a further shift of attitude to 'Aesop' (w. 1-3).

But the run from 4.15 (or thereabouts) to 4.26 is specially problematic. Its allocation to book 4 depends on the assumption that the editorial chunk *3.EpiL + 4.ProL' was displaced without disturb-

ing the sequence of fables. In support of this, 4.23 and 4.26, the two anecdotes about the poet Simonides, surely demand to stand as a pair within the same book-collection. But nothing prevents the

supposition, for example, that the whole run from '4.15 (or so) to 4.26' + *3.EpiL + 4./V0/.' was displaced en bloc from book 3 (for instance, by a shuffling of folia).

To pinpoint the ruination in PR of 4.13-15 as the most likely area of disjunction would be easy, but on reflection, this pertur- bation is more likely to be the product of a damaged section in their ancestor: PR present a single nonsensical conflation of the 'moral' for 4.13 + the start of the story of 4.14 + the conclusion of the aetiological piece 4.15.10) Nevertheless, Perotti's (scrambled) re-copying of the poems that make up the precise sequences '2.6- 3.19' and '4.21-5.5' (with Unes from '2.ProL\ '4./Yo/.' and '5./Yo/.' stitched into his own proem)11) is highly suggestive: could these im- plied 'blocks' of material preserve contours from Phaedrus' original book-divisions? The run '5.1-5' is a similar problem. It belongs to book 5 jf the editorial block ^,Epil. + b.ProU was displaced in the tradition of PR without disturbing the order of fables. In support of

this, the matching of 5.5 with 5.7, as the two 'theatre' pieces in

Phaedrus, constitutes a strong argument that they belong in the same book. But, again, Perotti's use of the sequence from '4.21-5.5' is disconcerting.

Such are the parameters that limit our knowledge of Phaedrus'

original books 3-5. We have noted that book 2 is a bare fragment; and should observe that book 1 has no closing editorial; indeed, since its last verse has certainly been lost from PR,12) the book has no firm claim to completeness?and with that goes control on the

10) The obscenitas of 4.15 may have been censored (v. 2), but 4.16 survives, though the subject is gay sexuality, and 4.13-4 scarcely stand out as intolerable.

11) Within these sequences, Perotti omits only 4.24, presumably as too familiar from Horace and as a clich?, and 3.9, which he had turned into infelicitous elegiacs of his own (Havet [op. cit.], 282).

12) The Mediaeval prose paraphrases (see n. 14 below) preserve the remains of a final verse: Ad.22 = Rom.2.2 = Wiss.3.S.

312 JOHN HENDERSON

likely dimensions of a Phaedrian gathering (even supposing that the first book would be a reliable guide to its?progressively more up- beat??successors).

2. The Appendix Perottina {App) provides frustratingly re-worked texts for thirty more fables, plus an editorial fragment {App.2\ and a stray moral {App.6). The conventional ordering, and so numbering, of these poems in editions of Phaedrus bears no relationship to

any authorial arrangement, for Perotti demonstrably scrambled the

thirty fables already known from PR. As noticed above, these lat- ter excerpts from Phaedrus shuffle the sequences 2.6-3.19 and 4.2?- d.5 virtually complete: App therefore probably represents almost all of the fables which originated from within these stretches (and those contiguous?) in his lost Ms, which was apparently an incomplete, but relatively unravaged, Phaedrus, There is reason to suppose that the bulk of App belonged to book 5, rather than 2; and on this

precarious (and largely circular) supposition hinges whether we can give flesh to the skeleton of editorial directives in deciding what kind of development Phaedrus presented through his corpus (see below, section 4).

3. The Mediaeval prose paraphrasts deriving from collections

originating in Late Antiquity {PhP) are a valuable, but intractable, extra reservoir: in rebuttal of Georg Thiele's Romulus (woefully per- verse constructions, from Phaedrus' best exegete),13) I shall examine the genesis of PhP in a detailed Excursus (below), to confirm and explore the traditional view that PhP preserve the substance of

twenty-eight further lost poems of Phaedrus.14)

13) G. Thiele, Der lateinische Aesop des Romulus und die Prosafassungen des Phaedrus (Heidelberg 1910; reprint Hildesheim 1985) = Lamb 54, no. 554.

14) ?? Ademari Cabannensis Codex (Leidensis) Voss. Lat. oct. 15, fol. cxva-cciiib. c. 1000- 10, penned in St. Martial Monastery at Limoges, probably by the monk and future historian Adh?mar ("one of the success stories of the eleventh century": R. Landes, Relics, Apocalypse and the Deceits of History. Ademar of Ch?bannes, 981-1034 [Cambridge, MASS 1995], 52). Sixty-seven fables, charmingly illustrated, no book divisions or editorial comment. F. Bertini, // monaco Ademaro e L? sua Raccolta di Favole fedriane (Genoa 1975) presents a new account of the genesis of Ad; cf. P. Gatti, Le favole del monaco Ademaro e la tradizione manoscritto del corpus fedriano, Sandalion 2 (1979), 247-56.

Wiss: Codex Wissemburgensis nunc Guelferbytanus (Wolfenb?ttel) Gudianus Lat. 148, fol. 60b-82a: tenth century ?ber Tsopi, in Lombard script, from the Monastery of


PhP are in origin selections from a single anthology. A short block of fables derived from a source used by 'pseudo-Dositheus' {Dos)15) has been appended ad cakem in the 'Romulus' tradition {Rom), and up to another eight fables in the collection transcribed by Ademar

{Ad) and Romy each of them peculiar to the collections in which they are found, have managed to insinuate themselves from unknown, post-classical, source(s). But in a substantial core of instances, PhP are so free from re-writing as to have instigated the once-traditional

occupation of re-constituting senarii to make 'Nouae Fabulai from des- iccated Phaedrus. The twenty-eight manufactured by Zander, Phaedrus

Solutus,16) were a serious contribution which all but vindicates the exercise.

Ss. Peter and Paul of Weissembourg. Prologue: Epistula Magutro Rufo Aesopus, 58 fables (with two split into two, separated, versions), the remains of another prologue (?, in two versions numbered as 5.6 and 5.8), and a mutilation of Phaedr.2^?? as its closing piece. Set out in five books (no connection with Phaedr.1-5 as preserved in PR): ProL; 1.1-14; 2.1-11; 3.1-11; 4.1-16; 5.1-10; Epil; tides for fables given before each book (with separate tides for the versions of Phaedr.4.13 and 14, run together?censored??in PR). Heavily corrected in the eleventh century, painfully illiterate.

Rom: Romuli Fdbulae, the collective name for a numerous group of related Mediae- val Latin Aesopica, named for the pseudonymous editor responsible for the prologue (in later collections, Romulus is identified as Romae Imperator). The Mss of Rom 'Vulgaris', the earliest from the tenth century, give texts of, or selections from, a core canon of: ProL: 'To Tyberinus'; 81 fables; a derivative of Phaedr.2.Z^ as an epilogue; a new, non-Phaedrian, Epil. Full and near-full versions are generally organized in four books: 1.1-19; 2.1-21; 3.1-20; 4.1-21. Later, derivative, Romuluses show omissions and deviation from the standard ordering that may be significant for our understanding of the genesis of Rom Vulgaris. Rom Vindobonensis is an especially important collection, with ProL; 79 fables; derivative of Phaedr.2.?/>t7. as closing piece; a new, 'learned' EpiL Its fables differ from the canon most notably by the inclusion of two successive fables (nos. 64-5) also present at the end of Wiss (= 5.9-10), but absent from Rom Vulgaris and from Ad. There are also some (significant?) differences in ordering. See Excursus below.

Texts of PhP: R. Hervieux, Les fabulistes latins depuis U si?cle d'Auguste jusqu'? la fin du Moyen ?ge, 1-5 (Paris 1884-9; reprinted Hildesheim 1970; ed.2, 1893-4, 1-2) = Lamb 51, no. 511; 52, no. 522. Hervieux' sigla for the various collections will be followed below.

15) I.e. Hermeneurnata pseudodosiiheana, C. G?tz, Corpus Glossariorum Latinorum (Leipzig 1892), 3, 39-47, 95-102 (Greek versions only in A. Hausrath, Corpus Fabularum Aesopkarum [Leipzig 1959], 1.2, 120-9).

16) C. Zander, Phaedrus Solutus, vel Phaedri Nouae Fabulae XXX (Lund 1921) = Lamb 54, no. 566. Zander also 'restores' Phaedr.4.13-4. Earlier verse composi- tions are less convincing: Gude in: Brotier (op. cit.), Burmann (op. cit.), C.T. Dressler, Phaedri Augusti Liberti Fabularum Aesopiarum Libri Quinqu? (Budissa 1838), L. M?ller, Phaedri Augusti Liberti Fabularum Aesopiarum Libri Quinqu? (Leipzig 1867, in

314 JOHN HENDERSON

Excluding their adapted re-cycling of the editorial 2.EpiL3 PhP

include 98 different fables:17)

54 preserved in the paradosis (PRDNV), 8 from the ps.-Dosithean tradition (Dos), 8 from unknown Mediaeval source(s),

28 Aesopica lost from PRDNV.

All of the last group are traditional Aesopic beast-fables, and we

should suppose that the paraphrasts filtered out other types of

Phaedrian piece, whether editorials, fables with humans, anecdotes, vel nm., although the 'human' stories App.\5 and 29 were included, as it seems for their misogyny, in a thematic sequence after App, 11

at Rom.3.8-lQ (cf. the collection at Weissembourg, Wiss.3A 1-4.1). Of the stories preserved in PRDNV which fit the category of

'beast-fable', just twenty-three are missing from PhP,iS) and many of these omissions are easily explicable on one form of plausible

reckoning or another.19) If allowance is made for just 9 rejections, PhP offer versions of 54 out of 69 beast-fables known from PRDNV.

If, as a rough-and-ready guide, this proportion is applied to those

28 beast-fables that are lost from PRDNV, but preserved in PhP, we may conjecture that around 36 beast-fables were once contained in the autograph Phaedrus which have since vanished from his direct

paradosis. At least one such might be assigned to book 1, namely AdAA = ?om.3.14 = WissAAO (Aes 302; 'restored' as Zander no. 16): it would make the disclaimer at l.Prol.5 f., placating readers averse from talking trees, a less empty flourish, since no other known

the Teubner series) = Lamb 49, no. 483, cf. De Phaedri et Aviani Fabellis Ubellus (Leipzig 1875), 14 f., and, finally, J.P. Postgate, Phaedri Augusti Liberti Fabularum Aesopiarum Libri Qumque (Oxford 1919, the O.C.T.) = Lamb 54, no. 565. That an Oxford Classical Text could print an editor's verse-composition attests Postgate's standing at its zenith.

17) Conspectus in Havet (op. cit.), 271-4. 18) 1.11 (but a related, non-Phaedrian fable at ?om.4.10), 15, 30, 2.1, 4, 7,

3.13, 16, 4.4 (but a related, non-Phaedrian fable at RomA.% 6, 9, 17, 19, 21, 5.4, App.H, 18, 21-2, 24-5, 30-2.

19) Nine examples: 2.4 is lengthy and hard to compress; 3.13 stands and falls by its enigmatic application; 4.19 is lengthy, Olympian, lacks a moral, and is excre- mental; 4.21 is a story eclipsed by its developed diatribe (w. 16-26); 5.4 involves pagan sacrifice (w. 1 f.), and an outsize reflective epimythium (w. 7-12); App.22, 25, 30 are closer to 'bestiary' lore than Aesopic morality tale; App.3\ concerns metempsychosis and classical lore of abiogenesis.


Phaedrianum features a vocal tree.20) The best guess is that the bulk of this material stems from book 2 (see below, section 4).

4. A bold estimate would be that the corpus Phaedrianum once com-

prised something like the following:

5 sets of editorial prologues and epilogues (if book 1 had an epilogue);

95 poems in PRD; 32 poems in App;

c36 beast-fables suggested by PhP. = A total of c 168 poems.

Several considerations affect a putative distribution of these numbers

through the individual books. On the one hand, the 'tralatician'

conception of book 1 advertised in 1 .ProL would make for perhaps a large number of brief 'Aesopica polished in verse' (w. 1 f). On the other hand, Phaedrus' steadily promulgated crescendo of initiative might encourage a sheer increase in volume for the later

books, though a widening range of material would mean the inclusion of what are on average progressively longer, more elaborate, efforts. An estimate of around 40 short fabulae for book 1, and then a drop towards 30 rather longer pieces by book 5 might not be far wide of the mark.

If this sketch were accepted, then a pristine Phaedrus would look

something like this:21)

20) But this is a fabulists' prologue topos: Babr.Prol. 1.4 f., Avian.Prol.21 f., Max. Tyr.O.2.36.1 (a promythium). In Phdr.4.8, a file speaks; in Babr.6, proverbially dumb fish do. The programmatic status of the topos marks the shift away from earlier Greek conceptualization of the Aesopic fable, which freely embraced human characters (cf. J.G.M. van Dijk, ?????, ?????, ?????. Fables in Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic Greek Literature. With a Study of the Theory and Terminology of the Genre [Leiden 1997], 3-37, esp. 34). The question remains: just how heterogeneous a Hellenistic Aesop collection did Phaedrus inherit, and pass on? Just when did the 'beast-fable' come to typify and dominate collections of Aesopica? Do PhP mark this critical moment? Or did Phaedrus' selection of such a preponderance of 'beast-fables' for his first book initiate the shift? This is the issue at stake throughout section 4. (It must not be forgotten that Phaedrus' is the earliest collection we know directly. Highly speculative, and unconvincing, reconstructions of lost Hellenistic ancestors for our Greek collection, the Augustana, dog studies of Phaedrus' authorship: e.g. Rodr?guez Adrados, Historia de la f?bula greco-latina, 2, 125-71.)

21) In the notes that accompany this sketch, the categories are analytic, and of course do not pretend to be Phaedrus': we should, indeed, resist any presumption

316 JOHN HENDERSON

Book l:22) I.ProL + 1.1-31 + a handful of traditional brief Aesopic beast-fables, including Aes 302 (?) and several other beast-fables from PhP, probably lost in the lacuna at the close of the book, as noticed above + lost Epilogue?

Book 2:23) 2.ProL + 2.1-8 + a score or more of traditional Aesopic fables, most preserved in PhP + a very few pieces 'inserted' by Phaedrus himself, to accompany 2.5 (an anecdote about Tiberius and a flunkey), as flagged at 2.ProL 9 f.; perhaps an anecdote or two about Aesop? + 2.EpiL

Book 3:24) 3.ProL: announced as such at v. 29 + 3.1-19 + a dozen poems lost, probably after 3.19 {perhaps those of the sequence from 4.15 (or so) to 4.26?) + 3.EpiL, which clearly anticipates 4.fVo/.l f. (referring back to the pronouncement at 3.Epil.\ f.) Book 4:25) 4.ProL: announced as such at v. 14 + 4.1-13/14 (or so) + more than a dozen poems after 4.14, probably including 4.15-26; perhaps including 5.1-5 + \.Epil:. established by the address (v. 5), to the Particulo of 4./Yo/.10.

that he worked from, with, or towards, any clearcut categories. The interventions of PhP, however, clearly map out a decisive re-invention of Aesopic fable, with an important bearing on any attempt to recover an idea of Phaedrus' own practice. Rodriguez Adrados, Historia de la fabula greco-latina, 2, 167-71 presents an analysis of the broadening from books 1 through 5 in terms of his own rather different set of categories.

22) Beast-fables + human fable (18), mythic fable (cf. 2, 6); beast-lore (25), human anecdote on theme found in Aesopica (14). . .

23) Beast-fables + human (2), Aesop chria (3); Roman anecdote (5)... 24) Beast-fables + human (1, 4, 11), mythic (17, cf. 18); Aesop chriae (3, 14, 19),

human anecdote (8), Aesop anecdote (5), Socrates chria (9); Roman anecdote (10)... 25) Beast-fables + human (18), mythic (10, 12, 15, 16, 24; cf. 17, 19), Aesop

anecdote (5); historical anecdotes (23, 26), Phaedrian satire (7, cf. 22), Phaedrian 'fable' (11).


Book 5:26) ?.Prol. (This could not have been 1 .EpiL because of its renunciation of Aesop [v. 1 f], and looks prefatorial.) + around 25 poems lost: probably including 5.1-5, and most of the Phaedriana in App + 5.6-10: poem '10' makes a very odd 'i^Togitf-substitute', with a dedicatee just barely mentioned in an enigmatic 'moral', v. 10, the last verse, and even this the product of a 'conjecture': Philete, Rigault (op. cit.: 1617): filite PR (fili te, RY\fili de-, R?n).

An assessment of Phaedrus' role in producing his collection is risky, but possible.27) A pattern familiar enough in Latin Literature peeps through the crippled corpus, signposted by editorial bulletins. Strict imitation of a Greek exemplar (l.Prol.l f.) develops into freer emu- lation, and generic limits, once established, are extended and crossed, until the original matrix is left behind (?.ProlA f.). Phaedrus begins to extend his account of the Aesopic genre, while taking the liberty of introducing an ingredient of his own, for variety's sake (2.??/.1-10); he proclaims Latin aemulatio of the Greek pioneer (2.Epil.5-9). Next he expounds the origins of the fable genre, and boasts of widening the trail blazed by Aesop into a freeway (3./?o/.33-9). First he quits while he is ahead, leaving stocks for any successor (3.EpiLl-5); only to recant at once, with the thought that no successor could second-

guess what Phaedrus left out of the picture, and dub his Fables

'Aesopian, not Aesop's', claiming he has multiplied the corpus and infused the old genre with new material (4./Vo/.l-13).

Such a progression will have been a still more marked feature of the complete oeuvre, with the beast-fables in PhP rounding out the

early books, the exploratory efforts including those that survive in

App concentrated in the later books, where the autobiography of Phaedrus and his writerly views on his project and its reception alter the character of his work, which came to host anecdotes Greek and Roman, along with various non-narrative homilies, even short

26) Beast-fables + human (2, 6), human anecdote (5); historical anecdote (1), ecphrasis (8), Roman anecdote (7)...

The range in App: Beast-fables + human (29, cf. 23), mythic (5), beast-lore (22, 30), Aesop chriae (9, 13), Aesop anecdotes (17, 20), Socrates chria (27), ecphrasis (7), protreptic (3, cf. 8), fairy-tale (4), conte merveilleux (16); Roman novella (15), Roman anecdote (10).

27) Cf. Rodriguez Adrados, Historia de la f?bula greco-latina, 2, 163-5.

318 JOHN HENDERSON

pieces of satirical badinage. The range of material was?and is? without close parallel in ancient Uterature; more particularly, the extension book by book of the writer's conception of his project gave the sizeable corpus a coherent story-line, which broke away from mere selection and transcription to support a quasi-narrative of self-dramatization by the writer, who bids to rank himself, more than a compiler, an 'author'. Indeed the Fabulae as an oeuvre appear to ape their betters by positioning their chief manifesto as a prolo- gus in medio,28) in the uniquely extended editorial 3.ProL which dilates on the reception, and self-consecration, of the writer. The first words of the book, Phaedri libellos (the only self-naming included anywhere in the text), seal the work; with the collection's first addressee to match (Eutyche, v. 2). A lecture to the reader to find time for Phaedrus and to rethink life-choice in order to enter the threshold of the Muses leads into an ironic Dichterweihe with an emphatic /Ego. . .

(v. 17) prefacing the brag that because 'his mother bore Phaedrus on the Pierian ridge', he was 'almost born in [the Muses'] school' (w. 17, 20). Parading a knowing quote from Virgil (Aen. 2. 77: the only attributed citation in the Fables),29) where wily Phaedrus shrugs '? la Sinon, "que ser?"' (v. 27), the proem launches into an aetiol- ogy for the Aesopic genre as an occasion to expatiate on his own investment in his work, launched by a second /Ego... (v. 38). Here we are thrown the only scrap of 'History' in the Fables, dark mut-

tering about 'Sejanus, calamity, courtroom, pain, suspicion . . .', as prompt for a denial of ad hominem criticism; ring-structure calls the elaborate composition home, puffing Phaedrus the proud Thracian

again, with a third flourish of /Ego... (v. 54), and for finale a nicely blunt captano beneuolentiae that declares itself to the reader to be just that?no more, no less (w. 62 f.). This pivotal 'mini-essay' stands out as the highwater-mark of editorial self-promotion, though the books to come seem to have delivered the expansion in range and

proportion of non-traditional material which would most easily

28) G.B. Conte, Proems in the middle, in: F. Dunn and T. Cole (ed.), Beginnings in Clasncal Uterature (Cambridge, MASS 1992, = YCS 29), 147-59; cf. D. Fowler, Second thoughts on closure, in: D.H. Roberts, F.M. Dunn, and D. Fowler (ed.), Classical Closure. Reading the End in Greek and Latin literature (Princeton, NJ 1997), 20 f.

29) Only paralleled by the unattributed Ennian sententia on reticence quoted as such at 3.EpilM.


provoke the grand airs of 3.ProL30) The centre-piece marked the writer's bid to profile his five books as a unity, and stamp his per- sonality indelibly onto the opus.

But Phaedrus was doomed to remain always the Nachduhter, creative translator-cum-versifier, of his first incarnation (\.ProL\ f.). Set- ting aside the engagingly self-satirizing editorials, let us next attempt a broad outline of the Aesopic legacy, from whatever lost Greek

source(s), utilizing a set of often overlapping criteria. Certainly inherited are stories where versions survive in extant

Greek Aesopica; so too, surely, fables where tellings or allusions survive in Greek Uterature. Not all would agree, but probably all the beast-fables are paraphrased, most likely from a single Hellenistic Greek Aesop, and indeed arguably this should be extended to cover all the tales of traditional type, whether human, mythical or alle-

gorical, attested in Greek literature or no.31) In many cases these stories recognizably articulate Greek proverbs and the like, while others are thematically akin to extant Aesopica; not beyond Phaedrus'

scope or initiative to insert among the fables, but impossible to deny his source, whose range is constructed for us solely by Phaedrus' editorial missives, and very closely in tune with the 'diatribic' colour-

ing of the whole collection.32) More debatable is the proposition that Phaedrus' Aesop differed from extant collections in including two further types of story: Phaedrus' anecdotes featuring Aesop are

plausibly 'fokeloric', particularly on the subject of Sklavenmoral; or evidendy dramatize chriae, maxims, current in Hellenistic discourse. Two more chriae-potms feature Socrates, on the pop-philosophy topic of Friendship and on the ethics of Slavery: these too are most likely

30) The sixty lines of 3.10, however, make it the longest fable we have in the ?uvre.

31) E.g. Perry (op. cit.), 'Introduction', lxxxiv-xc, who supposed (at lxxxv f.) "that many of his fables, perhaps a third part of them, did not come from any collection of fables ascribed to Aesop, but were either invented outright by himself, ... or . .. adapted from widely varied sources . .."; Rodr?guez Adrados, Historia de la f?bula greco-latina, 2, 155-60 presents a similar conspectus.

32) See esp. G. Thiele, Phaedrus-Studien I, II, III, Hermes 41 (1906), 562-92, 43 (1908), 337-92, 46 (1911), 376-92; A. Hausrath, ?wr Arbeitsweise des Phaedrus, Hermes 71 (1936), 76-103; F. Rodr?guez Adrados, Pol?tica c?nica en las fabulas es?picas, in: S. Boldrini (ed.) Filologia e forme letterarie. Studi offerti a F. della Corte (Urbino 1987), 1, 413-26.

320 JOHN HENDERSON

translated. Perhaps, too, some other pieces derived from the Greek

Aesop(s), though clearly not traditional fables, for example Phaedrus' fairy-tale (AppA, a 'Wunschm?rchen') and his conte merveilleux (App.16, a

'Wundererz?hlung'). But, especially in books 4-5, Phaedrus did introduce an array of

Greek-derived themes from beyond the likely range of earlier

Aesopica:33) three historical anecdotes presumably stem from a Greek Varia Historia of some sort: a pair on the poet Simonides, and 'Menander greets King Demetrius' (5.1). Perhaps not before book 5, the decision was taken to introduce Greek rhetorical and gno- mological material: the ecphrasis of Kairos (5.8) and the allegorical account of Hades (AppJ), an acidic protreptic on the limitations of mortality (App.3), and a sarcastic lament for the Delphic com- mandments (App.8). Satirical assaults on literary critics, and even Phaedrus' editorials, owe much to canonical Hellenistic poetics, but

they clearly count as his own contributions. As early as book 2 the fabulist had taken his boldest decision, to include the odd Roman anecdote picked up from oral circulation, or even dreamed up by himself (2.5; then 3.10, 5.7, AppAO; probably add AppA5; perhaps AppA6).3A) One fable demands to be set down as the creation of Phaedrus himself, an overdone, ill-fitted, and probably bogus aeti-

ology (4.11, cf. w. 14 f.). The moral? Fakelore is not so easily palmed off

From this sketch it emerges that Phaedrus is in the Quixotic position of exerting an extraordinarily powerful influence on European tradition, first as the (unacknowledged) primary conduit through which the beast-fable entered Mediaeval culture in Western Europe,35) second as a base for the revived fable culture of belles lettres into the

33) For a similar account of the broadening scope of Phaedrus' material, cf. Rodr?guez Adrados, Historia de la f?bula greco-latina, 2, 163-5.

34) Cf. J. Henderson, The homing instinct: Phaedrus, Appendix 16, PCPhS 23 (1977), 17-31, and Telling Tales on Caesar: Roman Stories from Phaedrus [forthcoming].

35) Via Romulus and derivatives such as Steinh?wel and Caxton: H. Steinh?wel Aesop (Ulm 1476-7) was the source, via a French translation, (e.g.) of Caxton's, and of Pedersen's, Aesop: 80 fables from Rom, in four books each of 20 fables, with Fabulae Extravagantes and a miscellany of other material, including some 'Poggiana', appended ad calcem (cf. J. Jacobs, The Fables of Aesop, as first printed by William Caxton in 1484 [London 1889]; B. Holbek, Aesops Levned og Fabler; Christiaen Pedersens over- scettelse qf Steinh?wels Aesop [Copenhagen 1961], 1-2).


eighteenth century,36) and third as the ubiquitous elementary text used in ?lite education through to the early twentieth century.37) Yet Phaedrus' role in all this remains the modest one of Latin translator of Aesopic (beast-)fables.

Any creative aspects of his full opus sank from view; between them and oblivion stand the survival of a single modestly-literate Ms and the whimsy of the avuncular fifteenth-century archbishop Perotti.

Though hardly a serious talent (for all his squawking and pluming), Phaedrus was no hack, but his material rather than his verse or wit has always been his work's main value. The Fabulae were pillaged and mutilated for their contents, and his efforts to protect them as a unique, finished, composition won scant respect.38) In short, as was always likely in a genre where compilation, not definitive or classic formulation, is irrevocably the core function of any particular redaction, he got treated much the same way he at any rate claims to have treated Aesop,39)

Excursus. The genesis of the Phaedrian paraphrases (PhP) The Mediaeval paraphrases clearly stem from an archetype more

complete, and occasionally more faithful, than the ancestors of PR,

36) J. de La Fontaine, Fables choisies, mises en vers (Paris 1692-45), 1-5, Sir R. L'Estrange, The Fables ofAesop and Other Eminent Mythologists (London 1692), J. Gay, Fables (London 1727), etc.; cf. T. Noel, Theories of the Fable in the Eighteenth Century (New York 1975), A. Patterson, Fables of Power: Aesopian Writing and Political History (Durham, NC 1991), J.E. Lewis, The English Fable. Aesop and Literary Culture, 1651- 1740 (Cambridge 1996).

37) Phaedrus was the entr?e to Locke's System of Classical Instruction: G.S. Haight, The George Eliot Letters: 1836-1851 (New Haven, CONN 1954), 1, 38. Cf. J.L. Clifford, The young Samuel Johnson (London 1955), 53: "the only book the class mem- orised to the end"; T.W. Herbert, John Wesley as Editor and Author (Princeton, NJ 1940), 113, "In most schools litde judgement is shown in the order of the books that are read; some very difficult authors are read in the lower classes, 'Phaedrus Fables' in particular". Phaedrus' 'pure Latinity' was regularly advertised, cf. (e.g.) R.W. Chapman, The Utters of S. Johnson (Oxford 1952), 1, 7, and Lamb op. cit.

38) The same is true of Babrius, whose editorial and authorial contribution was expunged from his paraphrases; and of Demetrius of Phalerum, if it was his Acsopia which became the nucleus of the Greek Aesopica of the Augustana, and later com- pilations (Diog. Laert. 5. 80, cf. Perry [op. cit.], 'Introduction', xiii f., F. Rodriguez Adrados, Historia de la f?bula greco-latina, esp. 1, 421-528, and idem, Les collections de fables ? l'?poque hell?nistique et romaine, Entretiens Fondation Hardt 30 [1983], La Fable, 143-85).

39) I must record here my debt to the expertise and rigour o? Mnemosyne's anony- mous reader.

322 JOHN HENDERSON

D, or NV.40) At some point in around the sixth century, or soon after, a lost (virtually?) complete Phaedrus was gutted for beast-fables. It may have been written already in scriptum continua, like the source of PR, though repeated notices of Phaedrus5 editorial claims to rank as a poet writing verses had to be removed before even a metrical innocent could miss that these had been poems (l.ProlA f., for a start). The proceeds of this culling were reorganized to form the prose anthology which became the common base of PhP, In the process, Phaedrian parentage was deliberately and systematically obliterated. The fables were no longer (if they ever had quite contrived to be) his. The new order bore scarcely any resemblance to its source,

again of set purpose. (The exception is Ad.3, 1, 9-10 = RomA.2, 5-7 = Wu?. 1.1, 6-8: from Phaedr.1.1, 4-6.)

A tabulation, based on the order primarily of Wiss, will best show, at the level of compositional structure, that Ad, Wiss, and Rom

(Vulgaris and Vindobonensis) are in origin further selections from this single common anthology of Aesopica. The tabulation is organized so as to highlight the areas of correspondence and discrepancy between Wiss and Rom, but other patterns also leap to the eye:41)

Number Tide Ad Rom Wiss

[Romulus to Tyberinus] [ProL] [Aesopus to Rufus] [ProL] [Fragmentary Prologue] [5.6 = [Fragmentary Prologue] 5.8]

1 3.12 / 1.1 5.7 2 1.20 2 3 1.1 3 1.2 1.1 4 Mouse and Frog (Z 1) 4 1.3 1.3 5 1.17 5 1.4 1.2

40) The two most important recent contributions to the problem of PhP are Nojgaard (op. cit.), 2, 404-31, and Rodriguez Adrados, Historia de la f?bula greco- latina, 2, 473-509, esp. 504-9, 'Nuevas Luces en el Conocimento de Fedro'.

41) Key: 'Number' = an ad hoc numeration; 'Title' = fable identified, where appropriate, by the numeration (after PR, and from App) in editions of Phaedrus, or by the numeration of Zander's Nouae Fabulae (= Z)- Ad, Wiss, Rom - numeration as in each collection. Underlined numbers mark fables that appear last in a book division. Italicized numbers mark fables whose position in the conspectus calls for attention.


(table cont.)


6 Cocks and Hawk (Z 2) 6 7 Hares and Frogs (Z 22) 2.9 1.4 8 Kid and Wolf (Z 23) 61 2.10 1.5 9 1.4 7 1.5 1.6

10 Snail, Mirror and Ape (Z 3) 8 11 1.5 9 1.6 1.7 12 1.6 10 1.7 1.8 13 1.8 64 1.8 1.9 14 1.19 1.9 1.10 15 1.29 12 1.11 1.11 16 Pauper and Snake (Z 21) 65 2.11 1.12 17 1.16 2.12 1.13 18 5.3 66 2.13 U4 19 Town and Country Mice (Z 4) 13 1.12 2.1 20 1.28 14 2.8 2.2 21 1.26 63 2.14 2.3 22 1.3 26 2.16 2.4 23 2.6 1.13 2.5 24 3.6 2.17 2.6 25 4.25 27 2.18 26 1.10 28 2.19 27 1.13 15 1.14 2.7 28 1.21 16 1.15 2.8 29 1.22 29 2.20 2.9

[Partridge and Fox] [30] 30 1.25 31 31 1.27 32 32 1.24 33 221 33 Ass and Ox (Z 8) 34 34 Ass not Lap-Dog (Z 5) 17 1.16 2.10 35 Lion and Mouse (Z 6) 18 1.17 2.11

[Crane, Crow and Farmer] 19 36 Sick Kite (Z 27) 1.18 37 Swallow and Birds (Z 28) 20 U9 38 Lion and Shepherd (Z 9) 35 3.1 3.1 39 Gnat and Bull (Z 10) 36 40 Lion and Horse (Z 24) 3.2 3.2 41 Ass and Racehorse (Z 11) 37 3.3 3.3 42 Bat (Z 12) 38 3.4 43 Nightingale, Hawk, Fowler (Z 13) 39 3.5 3.4 44 Wolf, Fox, Herdsman (Z 14) 40 3.6 3.5

324 JOHN HENDERSON

(table cont.)


45 1.7 2.15 3.6 46 1.2 21 2.1 3.7 47 1.31 22 2.2 3.8 48 1.23 23 2.3 3.9

[Baldy and Gardener] [24] [Owl, Cat, Mouse] [25]

49 1.12 41 3.7 3.10 50 App.U 3.8 3JJ. 51 App Ab 3.9 52 App.29 3.10 4.1 53 4.20 11 1.10 4.2 54 Flea and Camel (Z 20) 60 4.18 4.3 55 App.\9 54 2.4 4.4 56 4.1 47 3.18 4.5+

4.13 57 2.8 48 3.19 4.6+

4.16 58 3.7 45 3.15 4.7 59 4.8 42 3.12 4.8 60 Sheep and Wolves (Z 15) 43 3.13 4.9 61 Oaks and Axe (Z 16) 44 3.14 4.10 62 Belly and Limbs (Z 7) 3.16 4.11 63 App.l 46 3.17 4.12 64 4.24 2.5 4.14 65 3.15 2.6 66 App.U 3.11 4J5 67 5.10 62 2.7 5.1 68 4.14 (Z 25) 49 3,20 5.2 69 4.3 4.1 5.3 70 4.2 4.2 71 App.28 50 4.3 72 3.18 4.4 5.4 73 3.2 4.5 5.5 74 Vixen-Maiden (Z 26) 5.9 75 5.9 5.10 76 Wethers and Butcher (Z 29) 4.6

[Bleary Fowler and Birds] [4.7] 77 4.13 (Z 17) 51 4.8

[Stag, Horse, Man] [4.9] [Ass and Lion] [4.10] [Dos 5: Raven for Cat's Birthday] [4.11]


(table cont.)


[Dos 6: Lion's cave and Fox] 59 [4.12] [Dos 8: Crow and Pitcher] [4.13] [Dos 10: Boy and Scorpion] [4.14] [Dos 13: Sick Ass and Wolf] [4.15] [Dos 14: Horse, Bull, Goats] [4.16] [Dos 15: Man and Lion] 52 [4.17] [Dos 17: Ant and Cicada] 56 [4.19]

78 Sword and Traveller (Z 30) 4.20 79 Stork, Goose, Hawk (Z 18) 53 80 App.26 55 4.21 81 1.9 57 82 Ass and Horse's promises (Z 19) 58

[Eagle-Bride of Kite] [67] [EpiL from Phdr.2.^7.] 4.22 5.11 [Aesopus to Rufus] 4,23 =

EpiL; cf. Wiss.ProL

Now these collections are the end-products of a (finally, no doubt, impenetrable) succession of re-deployments and mutations. Inspection of the texts themselves would show that there is no decisive pattern of alignment of Ad with Rom against Wiss, or of Wiss with Rom

against Ad. Ad is usually literate, and often very true to Phaedrus'

text; Wiss is helplessly ignorant and incompetent. Rom tends to be

given to independent re-casting and improvisation. Rom appears to belong to a 'later stratum' than Wus, since Rom.ProL

is manufactured out of the material found in Wiss.ProL, 'To Rufus' (the remains become the opening of Rom.EpiL, plus a section found in the second ProL in Wiss (= 5.6; ultimately derived from Phdr.3. /Vo/.12-13, 33, 50). More significandy, Wiss contains no non-Phaedrian stories, and in particular, none of the block of fables that we find in the bilingual hermeneumata, Dos.42) If we disregard the 'late arrivals'

42) The importation of this material was evidendy performed by a vigilant editor, for he follows the order as in Dos, but omits fables he has already copied in the series of paraphrases of Phaedrus: Dos. 1 = no. 49 (Phdr. 1.12); Dos.2 = no. 35; Dos.9 = no. 27 (Phdr.1.13); Dos.M = no. 9 (Phdr.1.4); Dos.\2 = no. 5; DosA8 = no. 19. Thus Dos.\6 (Gnat and Bull) is omitted, and?somehow?the Phaedrian equivalent, no. 54 (Flea and Camel) is inserted into the 'Dosithean' block. This

326 JOHN HENDERSON

Rom A.7 and 4.9-10, we are left with an archetypal 'Romulus' of 80 stories (inclusive of RomA.22, = Phdr.2.?/>#., and 4.23, = Aesopus ad Rufum), distributed through the books as 1: 1-19; 2: 1-21; 3: 1-20; 4: 1-20. If we then supposed that the sole case of agreement between Ad and Wiss against Rom, namely my no. 20, shows the most recent

re-arrangement in Rom, we could restore this to book 1, and so realise a symmetrical collection of four books each with twenty fables

(the same plan as in Steinh?wel's Aesop, an independent rational- ization several centuries later). This analysis is confirmed by inspection of other Rom collections published by Hervieux. For RomVmd 303 and 90^ /fo^ Rom^", and Rom0xon all have my no. 20 in its

'rightful' place, viz. between RomA.12 and 1.13. Since RomVmd? (nb. RomVwdm and Rom? both terminate their

texts before they can get this far in the sequence) has as its nos. 64 and 65 (they have no book-divisions) the two fables which are otherwise known to PhP only through Wiss.5.9 and 10 (my nos. 74-5), it is likely that another recent displacement in Rom Vulgaris is the exclusion of these pieces from its canon: this would simply be the result of counting the 'epilogues' RomA.22 and 23 within the

numbering of fables. Other suspiciously 'recent'-looking moves in the formation of Rom

are more problematic: most notably, no. 1 (= Phdr.3.12, promoted to first place by Christian allegorizing, and prefixed to many a collection as 'The Fable of Fable',43) is in RomVmd m (but not in Rom^303, where it is second, after no. 3) placed between RomA .16 and 17 (= my nos. 34-5); RomVtnd? (not Rom*?1) has ?om.1.18 (my no. 36) as its no. 62, before Rom.3A0 (= no. 52), which precedes the two fables it lacks from Rom. Vulgaris (above), i.e. between RomAA and 5 (= nos. 72-3), and so almost at the end of the genuinely

suggests that the Culex of Ad in its version of no. 54 is original, and the Pulex of Wiss and Rom an error, or substitution. Our editor, the one responsible for the first grafting of Greek-derived Aesopica onto the Phaedrian corpus (for Dos is, ultimately, a composite paraphrase which in part, at any rate, derives from the same tradition as Babrius: O. Crusius, Babrii Fabulae Aesopiae [Leipzig 1897], 205 f, cf. Rodr?guez Adrados [op. cit.], 2, 213-25), continued the policy of PhP in excluding all but beast-fables, by dropping Dos A (= Aes.391), Dos.7 (= Aes.3\7); only Dos.2 (= Phdr.4.6, but derived from Babr.31), is omitted from Rom without obvi- ous reason.

43) K. Speckenbach, Die Fabel von der Fabel. %ur ?berlieferungsgeschichte und Wtrkungsgeschichte der Fabel von Hahn und Perle, FMS 12 (1978), 178-229.


Phaedrian stretch of Rom.44) Interestingly, RomVmdm manages to reach its own

'magic total' of 80 fables (including the derivative of Phdr.2.^?/., but not the Aesopus ad Rufiim, or Rom's distinctive new

EpiL). This does seem to have been contrived, by the omission of three of the 'Dosithean' fables (Dos 13, 15, 17), and a 'stop press' inclusion of Dos 5 as its no. 79, this compilation's only departure from the order of Rom Vulgaris.

Ad has shorn all book divisions and editorials. It is best seen as a bipartite collection: 1 through 50 (or 51; = my nos. 71, 77) rep- resent the common-source

'anthology' behind PhP, in very close

agreement with the order of Rom. (AdA^, = my no. 20, is the sole sequential discrepancy, noted above.) But the choice of fables is quite independent, including 7 stories otherwise missing in PhP, and 4 independent 'late' fables. From Ad.52 onwards, a mixed bag selects from the 'Dosithean' material and the block used in the final section of Rom, before embarking on what looks to be a second trawl.45) As the finale, Ad.67 is a late, non-Phaedrian, intruder. Now, if we

re-present this sequence in the later stretch of Ad in terms of their

equivalents in Rom, we will find they are: 2.4, 7, 14; 1.8; 2.11, 13. Which is to say that six out of seven stem from the area of max- imum discrepancy between Rom and Wiss.

The heart of the problem is, in fact, to grasp the relationship between Wiss and Rom. It is probable that some of the differences were motivated by the aim of symmetrical disposition in four books that we observed in Rom. But there are signs that the differences are chiefly attributable, unlikely as it sounds, to the use by Wiss of two separate copies of the common-source anthology. On this hypothesis, the blatant muddles in Wiss become intelligible: the confused double attempt at my no. 56, and the disjoined version of no. 57; the abbreviated 'second Prol.', 5.6, introducing 5.7 (= my no. 1),

44) Rom1^901 no doubt omits Awn. 1.18, one way or another, as belonging to the stretch its compiler never reached. (This is a collection of 50 fables, Rom8"1 of 60 fables only and, I reckon, exactly.) Rtrm.1.18'$ tide, together with the Rom.Prol. is, oddly, preserved in a scrap in Ad's codex, at fol. 4b (unrelated to the fables): Hervieux (op. cit.), I1, 232.

45) Ad.52, 56, 59 = Dos.\5, 17, 6; Ad.6Q the Phaedrian version of Dos.16, as in Rom (noted above); Ad.55 is Rom's last fable (= my no. 80.); Ad.53, 57, 58 (= nos. 79, 81, 82) are the proceeds of a putative second combing, for these fables are otherwise absent from PhP', so too A/.54 (= no. 55), 61 (= no. 8), 62 (= no. 67), 63 (= no. 21), 64 (= no. 13), 65 (= no. 16), 66 (= no. 18).

328 JOHN HENDERSON

then repeated in extended form as 5.8; perhaps, too, the knowl-

edge of Phaedr.4.13 and 14 as separate fables, as shown in the title-

headings, but not borne out by the text (see above); and, doubtless, the inclusion of nos. 74-5 21s the last fables in the collection?the

only pieces in Wiss that are absent from Rom. Vulgaris (but preserved in RomVmdm, as remarked already).

It appears that the idiosyncratic book divisions of Wiss are a 'late' concoction: for example, the division after its 3.11 appears to dis- locate a thematic sequence, my nos. 50-2 ('Misogyny'), the contents of which I have supposed to owe their preservation in PhP to pre- cisely this feature (nos. 51-2 feature humans, not beasts). The dis- location apparent for nos. 56-63, and the 'interweaving' in Wiss, 'books 1-3', of nos. 7-8, 16-8, 21, 22, 24-6, 29, 33, 38-45, 49-52, with what looks to be the 'basic' sequence of the common ancestor of PhP, is probably another product of the synthesis of two

exemplars (no. 45 is the only discrepancy which would not fit this hypothesis). It is not clear how these correspondences could be explained on the hypothesis that Rom represents the deviating re-

arrangements.46) But Wiss does seem to preserve in its jumble of prologues some

evidence of one aspect of the original common source. Namely, that it commenced with Phdr.1.1 (my no. 3).47) Thus we could reckon that one exemplar presented the compiler of Wiss with a 'Prologue + Phdr.1.1', the other with a 'Prologue + Phdr.3.12'. It is tempt- ing to think that Wus.?.S is the prologue of the earlier 'stratum', which was finally replaced by the editor of Wiss?s ancestor) with Wus. ProL, Aesopus ad Rufiim.48)

46) Again, ?om.2.4-6 (= my nos. 55, 64-5) form a thematic sequence ('Birth') which is disrupted in Wiss. The placing of Phdr.1.2 as ?om.2.1 (= my no. 46), before Phdr.1.31 (= my no. 47), also rings true, on the theme of the 'Election of kings'. (Both Wiss and Rom agree that my no. 38 should start their Book 3: *The Lion and the Shepherd'.)

47) Ad.2 (= no. 2) is clearly 'out of place', between the 'new' first poem (no. 1 = Phdr.3.12) and Phdr.1.1 (hardly the result of casual interchange, as with nos. 4 and 5 in Wiss, against Ad = Rom): did someone at some stage decide that 'Hungry dogs', which perish before getting to the hide sunk in the river by drinking up the water, would make a telling introduction to their Aesop?

48) Yet somehow Rom is able to depose some of the 'new' Prologue to be its new Prologue, once melded with material from the earlier, Phaedrus-derived, prologue. This problem defies solution.


The moral? Attention to PhP is guaranteed to bring out just how crucial the selection by Phaedrus of 'proper' Aesopic beast-fables at the head of his oeuvre has proved for the compilers of umpteen subsequent Aesops in Western Europe, while at the same time under-

lining just how much of a boost was given to the fables selected by Rom to lead out the Mediaeval Aesop. In the present context, how-

ever, the chief reward for investigating this thicket of confabulation is the assurance that, to some considerable degree, we can follow the main lines of the transformation of the original Phaedrus into the prose collections, and feel confident that the 28 fables from PhP reconstituted by Zander do derive from Phaedrus. Inspection of them will convince readers that their restitution to verse is essen-

tially warranted, even if the precise phrasing cannot be averred; indeed, these texts are generally in better shape than the poems recycled by Perotti in App. While these 'New Fables' elude system- atic re-assignment to their original sequences in Phaedrus, the distribution of fables in PhP that survive in PR is extremely suggestive: of 47 such, no less than 26 are found among the 31 in our Phaedrus book 1; as against 2 (3, including *2.????.') of the 8 (or 9, ditto) in book 2, 6 of 19, 9 of 26, 3 of 10 in our books 3-5. The likelihood is that the bulk of the Phaedrian material only extant in PhP derives from book 2, with perhaps several more from the final stretch of book 1.

Cambridge, King's College

Article Contentsp. [308]p. 309p. 310p. 311p. 312p. 313p. 314p. 315p. 316p. 317p. 318p. 319p. 320p. 321p. 322p. 323p. 324p. 325p. 326p. 327p. 328p. 329

Issue Table of ContentsMnemosyne, Fourth Series, Vol. 52, Fasc. 3 (Jun., 1999), pp. 257-384Front MatterEffete Rome: Sallust, "Cat." 53,5 [pp. 257-265]The Goat, the Gout, and the Girl: Catullus 69, 71, and 77 [pp. 266-276]Zur Textgliederung in der "Ars poetica" des Horaz [pp. 277-285]Ovid and Propertius: Reflexive Annotation in "Amores" 1.8 [pp. 286-307]Phaedrus' "Fables:" The Original Corpus [pp. 308-329]MiscellaneaPlotinus the Egyptian? [pp. 330-333]

De novis libris iudiciaReview: untitled [pp. 334-336]Review: untitled [pp. 336-337]Review: untitled [pp. 337-344]Review: untitled [pp. 344-345]Review: untitled [pp. 345-348]Review: untitled [pp. 348-354]Review: untitled [pp. 355-356]Review: untitled [pp. 356-357]Review: untitled [pp. 357-359]Review: untitled [pp. 359-360]Review: untitled [pp. 361-362]Review: untitled [pp. 362-364]Review: untitled [pp. 364-369]Review: untitled [pp. 369-380]

Libri ad Mnemosynen missiReview: untitled [pp. 381-382]Review: untitled [p. 382]Review: untitled [pp. 382-383]Review: untitled [pp. 383-384]Review: untitled [p. 384]

Back Matter

henderson j - 1999 - phaedrus' fables the original corpus

Documents

phaedrus fables

phaedrus cambridge

phaedrus thefabutist

john henderson phaedrus

original corpus

latin author

corpus phaedrianum

canon of latin literature