1776

1776 was a significant date in the modern investigation of the Aesopian fables: Thomas Tyrwhitt published a dissertation on Babrius together with a collection of Babrius’s fables in choliambic meter, drawing on a manuscript held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. His work further developed an authorship debate that had grown from the recognition that the fables bearing Aesop’s name were transmitted through many hands and periods.

The Babrius Question

The collection’s preface distinguishes Aesop’s lasting importance from the uncertain authorship of the surviving corpus. Aesop’s fables were first narrated and passed on orally; later writers and compilers preserved, versified, translated, and adapted them. The preface therefore presents Babrius not simply as a rival to Aesop, but as a possible collector and literary transmitter of fables associated with Aesop.

The case for Babrius developed through textual clues. Nevelet had argued that the collection attributed to Maximus Planudes could not have been written by Aesop, pointing to references to monks and to a verse from the Epistle of St. James. Francis Vavassor added evidence from later vocabulary, including the name Piraeus for Athens’s harbor. In the late seventeenth century, Richard Bentley argued that many existing fables could be converted, with slight verbal changes, into the choliambic meter associated with Babrius. He went further than the evidence then warranted by claiming Babrius as their exclusive author, a position that provoked opposition and debate.

Tyrwhitt’s Contribution

Tyrwhitt renewed and defended Bentley’s argument in 1776. His publication combined a dissertation on Babrius with a collection of fables in choliambic meter found in a manuscript at the Bodleian Library. The manuscript evidence gave the inquiry a concrete textual basis: the question was not only whether later Greek fables could be made to fit Babrius’s meter, but also how surviving material associated with Babrius related to the broader Aesopian tradition.

Tyrwhitt’s work belonged to a continuing scholarly effort rather than resolving the question on its own. The preface also credits Francesco de Furia with publishing previously unknown fables from a Vatican manuscript. Taken together, these investigations strengthened the view that Babrius had made a genuine collection of fables, while the larger claim that he was the sole author remained more ambitious than the evidence justified.

From Debate to Manuscript Discovery

In 1844, a manuscript found by Menoides at the convent of St. Laura on Mount Athos brought new evidence to the debate. It contained a choliambic version of Babrius’s fables arranged in two books: one with 125 fables and the other with 95. The discovery confirmed the significance of the earlier critical investigations and brought a substantial body of material into view.

The recovered fables were subsequently edited by George Cornewall Lewis and translated by James Davies. The preface describes Babrius as the earliest and most reliable collector of authentic Aesopian fables, a judgment supported in its account by the newly found manuscript. Tyrwhitt’s 1776 publication thus occupies an important intermediate place in the history recounted by the book: it advanced the textual case for Babrius decades before the Mount Athos discovery supplied direct manuscript confirmation.