Phaedrus and the Latin Mime: Preliminary Remarks

The connection of Phaedrus’ fables and the Latin mime is very close, more so than that with other literary genres that also influence them, such as epigram. The mime that Phaedrus is most inspired by is that of Publilius Syrus. With him, Phaedrus shares the servile origin, the use of iambic senarius (a metre despised by the cultured poetry of the Augustan age), the moral characterisation typing of the characters that, for both of them, contributed to the creation of proverbs from their work. However, it is not possible to seek textual correspondences between the work of the two poets, due to the lacunose tradition of Publilius’ mimes and, above all, the oral component that plays an important role in the work of both.