Babrios

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Babrios or Babrius was a Greek fable poet of Italian origin who lived in the late 1st century or in the 2nd century AD in the east of the Roman Empire , probably in Syria .

He rewrote Aesopian and Libyan fables in Choliamben and also composed his own fables, which he published in two books, the "Mythiamben", 144 of which have been handed down in full. Like his predecessors Phaedrus and Aesop, he continued to refer to the life of the lower social classes, but the pedagogical content (the doctrine) of the fable declined with the preference for poetic embellishment, so that his fables became entertaining episodes, to which the Promythion and the Epimythion is sometimes even completely absent.

123 of his fables are preserved in a manuscript, the so-called Codex Athous (London, British Museum, Addit. 22087 [10th century]), which was found in 1842 by Minoides Minas in a monastery on Mount Athos . Furthermore, some of his fables can be found in the so-called Collectio Augustana (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Gr. 777 [14th century]). Also important is the manuscript New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, Ms. 397 (11th century). There are also three papyri (P. Oxyrhynchos X, 1249 [2nd / 3rd century]; P. Amherst II 26 [3rd / 3rd century]; P. Bouriant I [5th / 6th century]) and the so-called Tabulae Assendelftianae after their discoverer H. van Assendelft de Coningh, wax tablets from Palmyra (Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, bibl. publ. Gr. 109 [2nd / 3rd century]). Luzzatto attempted a fragmentary reconstruction from 21 paraphrases.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. See entry Babrios in Trismegistos ; Judith Weingarten, Writing tablets from ancient Palmyra .

Web links

Wikisource: Babrios  - Sources and full texts