Telling Tales on Caesar Roman Stories from Phaedrus

by Phaedrus; Henderson, John

• ISBN13: 9780199240951
• ISBN10: 0199240957
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-05-10
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

This book contains a dozen entertaining stories written in colloquial Latin verse newly translated and commented on by John Henderson. The author, Phaedrus, was a freeman of Augustus who put Aesop's Fables into five books of verse during the reign of Tiberius. He included a number of storiesand anecdotes on everyday life situations as well as assorted satirical bits. Rarely read today, they take the reader to the heart of ancient Rome into everyday corners of classical life and culture, high and low, in the focal period of the first emperors, Augustus and Tiberius. Phaedrus was amember of the imperial staff and his themes include the emperor in private and in court; theatricity in public life; declamation as a site for mythologizing Rome; masculinity in ancient gender coding; patronage for poets under the Caesars; prejudice, wit, cynicism, and tyranny. The stories, combinedwith an introduction to the Fabulae of Aesop, show the ways Romans thought of, and protested at, Caesars.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	viii
Introduction	1	(5)
Praefanda	6	(3)
We Are Not Amused: Tiberius Caesar and the Flunkey (2.5)	9	(24)
The Only Good Caesar: Divus Augustus and the Case of the Widow and the Wicked Freedman (3.10)	33	(24)
Another Hard Luck Story: Phaedrus' Tale (3. Prologue)	57	(38)
L'Acteur-Roi: Piper Prince Breaks a Leg and Gets a Good Hand (5.7)	95	(36)
Appendix: It's the Real Thing: Grunt Piggy Grunt (5.5)	119	(12)
The Price of Fame: Pompey the Great and the Queen's Shilling (App. 10)	131	(20)
Talent-Spotting: King Demetrius meets the Poet Menander (5.1)	151	(14)
Your Life in their Hands: The King and Dr Cobbler (1.14)	165	(12)
Kings of Fable and Fables of Kings: Emperor Ape; Sick Lion; Dictator Kite; Tyrant Pisistratus, King Log and King Watersnake; and other Wolves (4.13; 4.14; 1.31; 1.2; 1.1, etc.)	177	(18)
Endnotes	195	(50)
References	245	(30)
Index of Chief Passages Discussed in the Text and Notes	275	(4)
General Index	279