SOURCE: "Phaedrus and Fable: Poetry of the Time," in A Literary History of Rome: In the Silver Age, edited by A. M. Duff, Ernest Benn Limited, 1964, pp. 107-27.

In the following essay, first published in 1927, Duff discusses what is known of Phaedrus's life, reviews the critical consensus on his work, and locates his work in the tradition that spans from Aesop to the medieval French interest in fables.

Phaedrus: the Fabulist of Rome

Phaedrus, the fabulist of Roman literature, was an alien slave of Thracian, or, to use his own adjective, 'Pierian' origin. The lines¹ in which he laid claim to birth 'almost in the very school of the Muses' are to be taken, according to the spirit of the context, in the strict geographical sense and not as a metaphorical anticipation of the Tennysonian conception that 'the poet in a golden clime is born.' Perhaps the...