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PHAEDRUS
fables had appeared only incidentally in poetry, as in Horace amongst others,
sometimes elaborated, sometimes brief. Horace's carefully developed story of
the town and country mouse (Sat. 2.6.79—117) possesses a delicate humour
worlds removed from the crude psychology which Phaedrus regularly offers.
We have something nearer to Phaedrus' manner in the story of the fox and
the corn-bin (Epist. 1.7.29—33). No doubt Horace had some influence on him,
but it was not very deep. Phaedrus stands apart from the main stream of
Augustan and post-Augustan poetry.
Demetrius' single book of fables could not supply Phaedrus with sufficient
number or variety of themes. And so, particularly in Books 3—5, he adds much
new material of his own (see 4 prol. 11—13), in part of contemporary interest,
Roman rather than Greek. Hence such poems as 2.5 (the emperor Tiberius and
the officious footman), 3.10 (the woman falsely suspected of adultery), and
5.7 (the inordinate conceit of the musician Princeps). In thus using the fable
as a vehicle for very diverse themes Phaedrus is not uniformly successful, nor
can he sustain overall the qualities of simplicity and artlessness which he affects.
3.10 and 5.7 are long-winded and tedious, as is 4.11 (the thief and the lamp),
a fable more in the Aesopian vein, but apparently Phaedrus' own creation (see
11. 14—15). He is more interesting when he writes of his own poetry, as in 4.7,
a derisive riposte to a detractor, reminiscent in some respects both of Persius
and Martial. But even here, by clumsily appending an epimythium quite out of
place in a personal poem, he reveals that he is ill at ease with his medium.
At the outset Phaedrus affirms that his purpose is to amuse and instruct,
and he discharges this intention as best he can, baldly obtruding instruction in
promytkia or epimythia. He may, intermittently at least, have another, ulterior
purpose, covertly to allude to circumstances and personalities of his day. We
learn from 3 prol. 38ff. that he fell foul of Sejanus. What poems in Books 1—2
excited Sejanus' anger we cannot tell: they may, of course, be amongst those
now lost. Phaedrus says (3 prol. 49—50) that he does not seek to brand individuals,
but to display the manners of society generally. 'Whether that be
true or not, it is not surprising that he caused offence, for the Romans of
this period were alert to double-entendre and quick to sense an affront. And
he does not always veil his thoughts: thus 1.1 is explicitly directed against
those who 'use trumped-up charges to crush the innocent' and 1.15 is devised
to illustrate that 'on a change in government the poor merely get a master
with a different name'. For one of his humble status Phaedrus is singularly
outspoken. And he is no detrectator sui: 3 prol. ought to have been a modest
apologia, but it proves to be an impudent self-justification. Housman said that
Phaedrus' 'spiritual home was the stable and the farmyard'. He might, one
may feel, have been even more at home in the Subura: he would certainly not
have denied that 'the proper study of mankind is man'.
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