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, Æsopus auctor quam materiam repperit Hanc ego polivi versibus senariis,[1012] still, for many of his fables, he deserves the credit of originality. Probably he enlarged and extended his original plan; for he afterwards speaks of simply adopting the style and not the matter of the Æsopean fable.[1013] He does not appear to have gained much fame or popularity; for he is only twice mentioned by ancient authorities, namely, by Martial[1014] and Seneca.[1015] The latter, writing to Polybius, a favourite freedman of Claudius, encourages him to enter upon the field which Phædrus already occupied, asserting that fables in the style of Æsop constituted a work hitherto unattempted by Roman genius (_intentatum Romanis ingeniis opus_.) Either, therefore, the fables of Phædrus were little known and appreciated, or Seneca purposely concealed from the Emperor’s favourite the fact of their existence, in order to flatter him with the hopes of his thus becoming the first Roman writer in his style. The persecution to which literary men were subject under the worst Emperors, of which Phædrus hints obscurely that he was a victim[1016]—the perils to which he would have been exposed by strictures upon persons in power, which, concealed under the veil of fiction, appear now dark and enigmatical, but which might have spoken plainly to the consciences of the actors themselves—probably rendered it a wise precaution to conceal his works during his lifetime; hence they would be little known, except to a chosen few, and the few copies made of them would account for the rarity of the extant manuscripts. Owing to the deficiency of ancient testimony, the genuineness of the Fables has been disputed; but the purity of style, and the natural allusions to contemporary events render it almost certain that they belong to the age in which they were supposed to have been written. No one but a contemporary could have written the fable commencing— Narrabo memoria quod factum est mea.[1017]