Note 475 — Chapter V · PHAEDRUS AND FABLE: POETRY OF THE TIME

Sen., Cons. ad Polyb., viii. 3 ... “fabellas quoque et Aesopeos logos, intemtatum Romanis ingeniis opus.” Most scholars take this to imply either an ignorance or an ignoring of Phaedrus on Seneca’s part. But Seneca was writing to a Greek freedman, and remembering that Phaedrus was Greek too, he compliments his correspondent by remarking that fable-writing was a sort of literary work which Romans had not tried. I have argued in C.R., XXIX. (1915), pp. 252-253, that there is no need to implicate Seneca in a wilful falsehood.