Fabulae

The Aesopic fables in elegiac couplets composed between the end of the IV and the beginning of the V century AD by the Latin poet Avianus became a favourite schoolbook in the Middle Ages and remained very popular until the nineteenth century. Even though classical scholars of high calibre such as K. Lachmann and E. Baehrens have spent much time and labour on Avianus’ text, many philological problems remain unsolved, and no satisfactory critical edition has yet appeared. As D.R. Shackleton Bailey ("Harvard Studies in Classical Philology" 82, 1978, p. 295) wrote, all editions of Avianus’ fables "are alike in presenting many readings which no critical reader can swallow, whether produced by the carelessness of copyists or the wayward fancies of the editors". The new Teubner edition of Avianus’ fables fills this gap; it offers an improved text, an extensive apparatus of loci similes, and a critical apparatus based on a fresh examination of the textual transmission. The Latin preface describes the stemmatic relationships between the manuscripts and deals with Avianus’ language, prosody, metrics and literary models.