Phèdre (writer)

Biography

The only information one has about it comes from its fables. Also let us not be us not even sure of his Latin name: Phaeder or Phaedrus ?

Born in Thrace, of Greek descent, Phèdre is taken along very young person like slave to Rome, where it is freed by Auguste. It is devoted then to the fable, whose it makes a literary kind, and publishes its first collection at once. Employed with the palate, it is pilot problems of succession which the empire under Tibère, Caligula and Néron knows; suspected to have slipped of allusions political into some of its fables - in particular against the favorite of Tibère which would have felt aimed -, he is condemned to the exile from 27 to 31. He goes back to Rome after the death of Tibère and devotes himself fully to the publication of his 4 other collections of fables before dying at the beginning of the reign of Néron.

Work

Phèdre thus wrote a collection entitled Phaedri Augusti Liberti Fabulae AEsopiae ( esopic Fables of Phèdre, freed from Auguste ). It counts five books which contain 135 versified fables. Each book is preceded by a prolog and follow-up of one epilog except for the book I which does not comprise an epilog.

Phèdre showed a relative inventiveness, because only 47 parts are directly borrowed from its predecessor Ésope. Who more is, Phèdre chose the worms, where Esope had chosen prose. The Latin author puts in scene stories of animals, human characters, but also Esope itself. The other pieces of poetry come from various sources and original creations. Some even seem to be drawn from real various facts.

In spite of formal qualities of its fables, Phèdre did not reach the literary fame to which he aspired. He is not even recognized by his contemporaries, who are unaware of it in the literal sense of the word, and he complains some besides in the prolog about Book III. He falls into anonymity from the fabulists to the Moyen-âge, even if he is abundantly plundered, and its name leaves the lapse of memory only with the discovery of an old manuscript by humanistic French Pithou in 1596.

It inspired Jean of the Fountain in the composition of good number of its fables.

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