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PHAEDRUS, Roman fabulist, was by birth a Macedonian and lived in the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius and Claudius. According to his own statement (prologue to book iii.), not perhaps to be taken too literally, he was born on the Pierian Mountain, but he seems to have been brought at an early age to Italy, for he mentions that he read a verse of Ennius as a boy at school. According to the heading of the chief MS. he was a slave and was freed by Augustus. He incurred the wrath of Sejanus, the powerful minister of Tiberius, by some supposed allusions in his fables. and was brought to trial and punished. We learn this from the prologue to the third book, which is dedicated to Eutychus, who has been identified with the famous
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medieval versions of Phaedrus and their derivatives see L. Roth, in Philologus, i. 523 seq. ; E. Grosse, in Jahrb. f. class. Philol., cv. (1872); and especially the learned work of Hervieux, Les Fabulistes latins depuis le siecle d'Auguste jusqu'a la fin du moyen age (Paris, 1884),'who gives the Latin texts of all the medieval imitators (direct and indirect) of Phaedrus, some of them being published for the first time.	(J. P. P.)