Phædrus, like Horace, is his own biographer; and the only knowledge which we have respecting his life is furnished by his Fables. In the prologue to the third book he informs us that he was a native of Thrace: “I,” he says, “to whom my mother gave birth on the Pierian hill—
Ego quem Pierio mater enixa est jugo.”
And, again, he exclaims, “Why should I, who am nearer to lettered Greece, desert for slothful indolence the honour of my fatherland, when Thrace can reckon up her poets, and Apollo is the parent of Linus, the muse of Orpheus, who by his song endowed rocks with motion, tamed the wild beasts, and stopped the rapid Hebrus with welcome delay?—
Ego literatæ qui sum propior Græciæ,
Cur somno inerti deseram patriæ decus;
Threïssa cum gens numeret auctores suos,
Linoque Apollo sit parens, Musa Orpheo
Qui saxa cantu movit, et domuit feras,
Hebrique tenuit impetus dulci morâ?”
From the title, “Augusti Libertus,” prefixed to his fables, it is clear that he adds one more distinguished name to that list of freedmen, who were celebrated in the annals of literature. Although, in the preface to his work, he modestly terms himself only a translator of Æsop,