PHAEDRUS, Roman fabulist, was by birth a Macedonian and lived in the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius and Claudius.
According to his own statement (prologue to book iii.), not per haps to be taken too literally, he was born on the Pierian moun tain, but he seems to have been brought at an early age to Italy, for he mentions that. he read a verse of Ennius as a boy at school.
According to the heading of the chief ms. he was a slave and was freed by Augustus. He incurred the wrath of Seianus, the power ful minister of Tiberius, by some supposed allusions in his fables, and was brought to trial and punished. We learn this from the prologue to the third book. The dates of publication of the fables are unknown, but Seneca, writing between A.D. 45 and 43 (Consol.
ad. Polyb. 27), knows nothing of Phaedrus, and it is probable that he had published nothing then. His work shows little or no originality; he simply versified in iambic trimeters the fables current in his day under the name of "Aesop," interspersing them with anecdotes drawn from daily life, history and mythology. He tells his fable and draws the moral with businesslike directness and simplicity; his language is terse and clear, but thoroughly prosaic. His Latin is correct, and, except for an excessive and peculiar use of abstract words, shows hardly anything that might not have been written in the Augustan age. From a literary point of view Phaedrus is inferior to Babrius, and to his own imitator, La Fontaine; he lacks the quiet picturesqueness and pathos of the former, and the exuberant vivacity and humour of the latter.
In the middle ages Phaedrus exercised a considerable influence through the prose versions of his fables which were current, though his own works and even his name were forgotten. Of these prose versions the oldest existing seems to be that known as the "Anonymus Nilanti," so called because first edited by Nilant at Leiden in 1709 from a ms. of the 13th century. It ap proaches the text of Phaedrus so closely that it was probably made directly from it. But the largest and most influential of the prose versions of Phaedrus is that which bears the name of Romulus. It contains 83 fables, is as old as the loth century, and seems to have been based on a still earlier prose version, which, under the name of "Aesop," and addressed to one Rufus, may have been made in the Carolingian period or even earlier. The collection of fables in the Weissenburg (now WolfenbUttel) ms. is based on the same version as Romulus. These three prose versions contain in all zoo distinct fables, of which 56 are derived from the existing and the remaining 44 presumably from lost fables of Phaedrus. Several scholars have tried to restore these lost fables by versifying the prose versions.
The collection bearing the name of Romulus became the source from which, during the second half of the middle ages, almost all the collections of Latin fables in prose and verse were wholly or partially drawn.
The first edition of the five books of Phaedrus was published by Pithou at Troyes in 1596. In the beginning of the 18th century there was discovered at Parma a ms. of Perotti (1430-80), arch bishop of Siponto, containing 64 fables of Phaedrus, of which some 3o were new. These new fables were first published at Naples, by Cassitto in 1808, and afterwards (much more cor rectly) by Jannelli in 1809. Both editions were superseded by the discovery of a much better preserved ms. of Perotti in the Vatican, published by Angelo Mai in 1831. For some time the authenticity of these new fables was disputed, but they are now generally ac cepted, and with justice, as genuine fables of Phaedrus. They do not form a sixth book, for we know from Avianus that Phae drus wrote five books only, but it is impossible to assign them to their original places in the five books. They are usually printed as an appendix.
Since Pithou's edition in 1596 Phaedrus has been often edited and translated; among the editions may be mentioned those of Burmann (1718 and 1727), Bentley (1726), Schwabe (18°6), Berger de Xivrey (183o), Orelli (1832), Eyssenhardt (1867), L. Miiller (1877), Rica (1885), and above all those of L. Havet (Paris, 1895) and J. P. Postgate (Phaedri Fabulae Aesopiae, Script. Class. Bibl. Oxon. 1920). For the mediaeval versions of Phaedrus and their derivatives see L. Roth, in Philologus, i. 523 seq.; E. Grosse, in Jahrb. f. class. Philol., cv. (1872) ; and espe cially the learned work of Hervieux, Les Fabulistes latins depuis le siecle d'Auguste jusqu'a la fin du moyen age (Paris, 1884), who gives the Latin texts of all the mediaeval imitators (direct and in direct) of Phaedrus, some of them being published for the first time. (J. P. II.; X.) PHAER (or PHAYER), THOMAS (151o?-156o), English translator of Virgil, was educated at Oxford and at Lincoln's Inn. He published in 1535 Natura brevium, and in 1543 Newe Boke of Presidentes. He says on the title-page of his version of the Aeneid that he was "solicitor to the king and queen's majesties, attending their honourable council in the marches of Wales." He settled at Kilgarran in Pembrokeshire, and combined the study of medicine with his legal practice. He wrote several medical works, and was admitted M.D. of Oxford in 1559. He contributed to Sackville's Mirrour for Magistrates, "Howe Owen Glendower, being seduced by false prophecies, toke upon him to be Prince of Wales." In 1558 appeared The Seven First Bookes of the Eneidos of Virgil converted into English Meter. He left his task incomplete. The translation was finished by Thomas Twyne in 1584. Phaer was the first to attempt a complete English version of Virgil, the ear lier renderings of Surrey and Gawain Douglas being fragmentary.