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PHAEDRUS was of Thracian or Macedonian origin, and was probably brought as a captive to Rome in the time of Julius Caesar. He is said to have been a slave of the Emperor Augustus, but rose to freedom and fame as a writer of metrical fables. He lived through the reign of Tiberius, to whom he refers in his poems. Sejanus, the powerful minister of Tiberius, was his bitter and persistent enemy. His poems are mainly versions of Aesopian fables, with a few original and contemporary stories. He presented to the Roman world that form of imaginative literature which Aesop had made familiar to the Greeks. His importance was greatest in the middle ages; when the fables of Romulus and other collections were current, based originally on his. The name of Phaedrus, however, was unknown; and the authentic fables were not discovered till the 16th century.
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| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
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