Phaedrus (fabulist)
Gaius Julius Phaedrus (c. 15 BC – c. 50 AD) was a Roman fabulist, by birth a Macedonian and lived in the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius and Claudius.
Quotes
[edit]- Fortes indigne tuli
Mihi insultare: te, nature dedecus,
Quod ferre certe cogor, bis videor mori. - Ill have I brook’d that nobler foes
Should triumph o’er my dying woes:
But, scorn of nature, forced to lie
And take thy taunts, is twice to die.- Phaedrus, 1, 21, 10. The Dying Lion to the Ass that kicked him.
- Reported in: Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (1904), no. 819.
Fables
[edit]- Fabulae Aesopiae
- Submit to the present evil, lest a greater one befall you.
- Book I, fable 2, line 31.
- He who covets what belongs to another deservedly loses his own.
- Book I, fable 4, line 1.
- That it is unwise to be heedless ourselves while we are giving advice to others, I will show in a few lines.
- Book I, fable 9, line 1.
- Whoever has even once become notorious by base fraud, even if he speaks the truth, gains no belief.
- Book I, fable 10, line 1.
- By this story [The Fox and the Raven] it is shown how much ingenuity avails, and how wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.
- Book I, fable 13, line 13.
- No one returns with good-will to the place which has done him a mischief.
- Book I, fable 18, line 1.
- It has been related that dogs drink at the river Nile running along, that they may not be seized by the crocodiles.
- Book I, fable 25, line 3.
- Every one is bound to bear patiently the results of his own example.
- Book I, fable 26, line 12.
- Come of it what may, as Sinon said.
- Book III. The Prologue, line 27.
- Non semper ea sunt quae videntur.
- Translation: Things are not always what they seem.
- Book IV, fable 2, line 5.
- Jupiter has loaded us with a couple of wallets: the one, filled with our own vices, line he has placed at our backs; the other, lie heavy with those of others, he has hung before.
- Book IV, fable 10, line 1.
- A mountain was in labour, sending forth dreadful groans, and there was in the region the highest expectation. After all, it brought forth a mouse.
- Book IV, fable 23, line 1.
- A fly bit the bare pate of a bald man, who in endeavouring to crush it gave himself a hard slap. Then said the fly jeeringly, "You wanted to revenge the sting of a tiny insect with death; what will you do to yourself, who have added insult to injury?"
- Book V, fable 3, line 1.
- Once lost, Jupiter himself cannot bring back opportunity.
- Book V, fable 7, line 4.
- "I knew that before you were born." Let him who would instruct a wiser man consider this as said to himself.
- Book V, fable 9, line 4.
- Homo doctus in se semper divitias habet.
- A learned man always has riches within himself.
- Book VI, fable 22, line 1
- A learned man always has riches within himself.
