Babrius
（
Βάβριος) or
Babrias (
Βαβρίας). The compiler of a comprehensive collection of Aesop's
fables in choliambic metre. The book is probably to be assigned to the beginning of the first
century B.C. Until 1842 nothing was known of Babrius but fragments and paraphrases, bearing
the name of Aesopus. (See
Aesopus.) But in that year
a Greek, Minoides Minas, discovered 123 of the original fables in the monastery on Mt. Athos.
In 1857, he brought out 95 more, the genuineness of which was disputed by Cobet and
other scholars. These were edited by Lewis in 1859, and are included in Bergk's
Anthologia Lyrica, 4th ed.
(1883). Babrius has been edited also
by Lachmann
(Berlin, 1845), and, with additions from the Bodleian and Vatican
MSS., by Gitlbauer
(Vienna, 1882). The style of Babrius is simple and pleasing,
the tone fresh and lively. The fables of
Phaedrus
(q.v.) were imitated, with considerable closeness to the original, from the
μῦθοι or
μυθίαμβοι of Babrius. An
excellent text, with dissertations, notes, and lexicon, is that of Rutherford
(London,
1883).
