the author of five books of Fables, in Latin iambic measure, was a native of Thrace or Macedonia, and brought at a very early age to Rome, where he became the slave of Augustus, and from whom he subsequently received his freedom. The few facts that we know respecting his personal history are to be collected from his Fables, as he is noticed by no earlier writer than Avianus, unless, perhaps, Martial may allude to him in one of his epigrams (iii. 20). If he really existed at this early period, it is strange that he should have been unknown to Seneca (Consol. Poliph. 27). By his long residence at Rome, Phædrus acquired a complete acquaintance with the language, and wrote it with as much ease as he could have done that of his own country. In the reign of Tiberius, he excited the wrath of Sejanus, and was banished by him, though for what cause we are nowhere distinctly informed. Under Caligula we find him in hopes of being re-instated in his position at court, through the influence of Eutychus. Part at least of these Fables must have been written in the latter years of the poet, and not published till after the death of Sejanus. Schwabe, who has examined this point with great diligence, thinks that the first two books were written after the departure of Tiberius to Caprea, the third under Caligula, and the fourth and fifth under Claudius. One part of these Fables consists of very happy translations of the Greek Fables of Æsop into the Latin language, or imitations of them in verse, similar to that employed in the translations. The other part seems to have been original, or at least we have no longer the writers from whom he borrowed his subjects. The style is pure, the language remarkably correct, and the whole is written with simplicity and ease. Yet many have doubted whether these fables can be considered as the genuine productions of Phædrus, the freedman of Augustus, as we have so few manuscripts of the work, and as Seneca was evidently unacquainted with it. Some ascribe them to the pen of Nicolaus Perotti, Archbishop of Manfredonia, who lived about the middle of the fifteenth century; but, in later times, the discovery of some manuscripts, one of which is considered as of the tenth century, has proved the incorrectness of such a supposition. The best edition of the works of Phædrus is that by J. C. Orelli, Zurich, 1831, 8vo. The English translations of Phædrus are as follows:—Philip Ayres (1689), Thomas Dyche (1716), Dan. Bellamy (1734), Anonymous (1745), John Entick (1754), "A Gentleman of the University of Cambridge" (1755), Christopher Smart (poetical translation, 1765), Francis Fowke (1776), H. T. Riley, with C. Smart's metrical version in "Bohn's Classical Library" (1853).