Minor Latin poets; with introductions and English translations

'^THE FABLES OF AVIANUSAvianus lived in the second century and wrote inclassical Latin and in correct metre, while schoolmasters,rhetoricians, interpolators and copyists areresponsible for the depravations.Since Lachmann's day, however, the date ofBabrius" the fabulist, whom Avianus mentions andupon whom (as we shall see) he models a great partof his work, has been established by Otto Crusius.*Babrius, we now know, wrote under Severus Alexander(222-235 A.D.) ; and so Avianus must belongto a subsequent age. Moreover, arguments fromstyle really support the view that Avianus flourishedabout 400 A.D. Many couplets, it may be conceded,particularly in the '* promythia " and ' epimythia,"employed to introduce or conclude some fables, aswe now have them, are quite late additions ; otherscan be plausibly emended into classical Latin.Still, there remain some violations of prosody,^ bothdefying emendation and occurring in coupletswhich cannot be dismissed as interpolations withoutdestroying the sense of the fable ; while much of thelate Latin (see Ellis, Proleg. xxx sqq.) is embedded inthe core of a fable, and must therefore come from theoriginal Avianus. These violations of prosody andthis late Latin prevent us from putting the period ofAvianus earlier than the later part of the fourthcentury." Valerius Babrius composed two books of fables in Greekscazons. The dedication of one of his books is to the son ofSeverus Alexander. We have in all 137 fables along withfragments. There is in the Bodleian a Greek prose paraphraseof many of his fables, including some no longer extant inBabrius : see W. G. Rutherford, Babrius, London 1883.* De Babrii Aetate, Leipz. Stud. 11. 238.Cf. remarks on metre later in Introduction.671