Note 477 — Chapter V · PHAEDRUS AND FABLE: POETRY OF THE TIME
Reading edition
Mart., III. xx. 5. This is Friedländer’s suggestion ad loc. Teuffel, Gesch. d. röm. Lit., § 284, 3, dismisses it summarily as against probability (“ohne Wahrscheinlichkeit”). But Plessis, La poés. lat., p. 487, agrees with Friedländer. Ellis (op. cit., p. 8) takes Martial to mean the fabulist, and improbi to allude to fables such as I. xxix.; III. i.; III. iii.; IV. xv. (xvi.); IV. xviii. (xix.). Thiele, in Philologus, LXX., 1911, pp. 539-548, proposes to read in Martial “an aemulatur improbi logos Phaedri,” taking logos = apologos (cf. Sen., Cons. ad. Polyb., viii. 3) and improbi = “audacious” applied to political allusions in the fables.