A Shock Absorber?
We can all use a shock absorber at times. For most of us, our first encounter with genuine, unadapted, written Latin is usually a shock to the system. No matter how carefully we’ve prepared with graduated or simplified texts, it always seems to feel like the proverbial jump in the deep end. That’s why teachers need to choose with care the first author that our students face directly. Caesar’s Gallic War has traditionally claimed this honor because it has so much to offer as an introductory text (see here and here). Caesar wrote his commentaries in prose, of course. Latin poetry presents an additional set of challenges. Is there an ancient author particularly suited to introduce students to the intricacies of classical Latin poetry?
Julius Caesar has been the traditional introduction to Latin prose
Julius Caesar, by Aegidius Sadeler, after Titian, 1624 – 1650
There’s more than one way to answer that question, of course. In the middle ages new Latin learners started with Vergil’s Aeneid. Not just as their introduction to Latin verse: Vergil was their introduction to Latin, period. Students would start with Arma virumque cano, learning the meaning and use of every word, and by the end they would know Latin. Hopefully. Most of us would consider that a pretty steep climb, however. I’m not the first to point out that we don’t expect even native English speakers to start their study of poetry with Shakespeare’s sonnets or Eliot’s Four Quartets. Our first encounter with poetry’s distinctive character is usually in the form of nursery rhymes, and we build from there.
A Fabulist by Any Other Name . . .
As it happens, there is an author of Latin nursery rhymes (or their equivilent) who fits the bill. His name was Phaedrus, and he wrote in the early 1st century AD. You probably already know many of his stories under the name of the original author, the Greek author Aesop (Αἴσωπος). Phaedrus adapted Aesop’s Greek fables into Latin. Modern English versions of Aesop’s fables tend to be in prose, but Aesop and his Latin protege Phaedrus set their stories to verse, using the entire bag of poetic tricks that classical poets had at their disposal.
The advantage for us is that we can begin studying classical Latin poetry in a relatively non-stressful context. Take, for instance, Fabula 4.10:
Pērās imposuit Iuppiter nōbīs duās:
Propriīs replētam vitiīs post tergum dedit,
Aliēnīs ante pectus suspendit gravem.
Hāc rē vidēre nostra mala nōn possumus;
Aliī simul dēlinquunt, cēnsōrēs sumus.
Jupiter has placed two sacks on us:
He has bestowed one filled with our faults behind our back,
In front of our chest, he has hung one heavy with other peoples’ [faults].
Because of this fact, we can’t see our own evils;
When others fail, we are judges of morality.
A Simple Little Poem
There’s a lot packed into this simple little poem. Some students will immediately see the same moral we find in Jesus’ parable of the splinter in the eye (Luke 6:41-46). There are also a lot of things that are common in Latin poetry but are unknown in modern English verse. For example, the last word in the first line, the adjective duās, modifies the first word, Pērās:
Pērās imposuit Iuppiter nōbīs duās:
By splitting this phrase in this way, the author creates a “word picture” foreshadowing the image of bags in front and behind that he develops in the lines below.
The word order effects don’t stop there. Notice how Phaedrus emphasizes the contrast between our own, Propriīs, misdeeds in line two and other peoples’, Aliēnīs, in line 3 by placing those words first in their respective lines. in the remainder of each line he uses chiasmus to repeat the word picture:
Propriīs replētam vitiīs post tergum dedit,
Aliēnīs ante pectus suspendit gravem.
Notice that in line 2 post tergum dedit, “bestowed behind our back,” is after (or behind) the accusative adjective replētam; in the next line ante pectus suspendit, “hung in front of our chest,” is in front of the accusative adjective gravem.
This little poem also offers some not terribly complex lessons in poetic compression. For instance, we see the feminine plural Pērās, “sacks,” in the first line. From the gender we can infer that the feminine adjective repletam, “filled,” in the next line refers to one of these sacks, and gravem in the next line the other. Just as there was no need to repeat Pērās in either line (and no need for a pronominal “one” as in English), vitiīs is just assumed with gravem. The rest of the poems in the collection are equally rich in “teachable moments.”
High Expectations
Phaedrus, it seems, had high expectations for children’s literary understanding. Or maybe, as A.A. Milne does in his Winnie the Pooh stories, he wanted to throw in a little something for the benefit of the adults who do the actual reading. In any event, these simple nursery verses contain some surprisingly sophisticated poetic technique.
That is not to say, of course, that the work of Phaedrus is on the same level as that of masters such as Ovid, Horace, or Vergil. Nowhere near. But that’s just the point. We don’t start out with Vivaldi’s Guitar Concerto in D Major at our first lesson with the stringed instrument. The same principle applies to learning the intricacies of classical Latin poetry. The Fabulae of Phaedrus bring us the distinctive and novel features of that tradition in the context of short, amusing, and often familiar stories. It’s not a bad place to start.
Where to Find Phaedrus‘s Fabulae:
After all that, you might be wondering where to find these poems. Seven of them (including the one I discuss above) are included among the “Loci Immutati” in Wheelock’s Latin, along with notes, etc.. I have a Wheelock set in my classroom, so that’s what I generally use with my students. The entire collection is available online at https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/ (the whole site is an invaluable resource, by the way). The Latin Library, however, provides just the text, with no notes.
There are also a number of reprints of 19th century school texts available from online booksellers such as Alibris and Amazon, with notes designed for 19th century schoolchildren. I can’t speak for the usefulness of the notes, but these books do include more of the poems than Wheelock does.
I first encountered Phaedrus, by the way, in my very first college Latin class. We used copies (mimeographs, actually, for those of you old enough to remember those) of an old school book that had Aesop’s Greek on one page, and Phaedrus’s Latin on the facing page. I have no idea where the professor found it, but I’d love to get my hands on the original book.
Featured image top of page: Aesop Tells his Fables, by Johann Michael Wittmer, 1879.
