1846

1846 is significant in the book’s account of the Aesopian fables as the year George Cornewall Lewis published an edition of Babrias based on a manuscript discovered on Mount Athos. The recovery gave scholars access to a substantial collection in verse and, in the preface’s assessment, helped establish Babrias as an early and reliable collector of fables associated with Aesop. Lewis’s edition also appears among the sources Townsend used for his translation.

The manuscript and its discovery

The manuscript was found in 1844 at the convent of St. Laura on Mount Athos by Menoides, who had been commissioned to search for ancient manuscripts at the suggestion of M. Villemain, France’s Minister of Public Instruction under King Louis Philippe. It was the long-sought choliambic version of Babrias. The manuscript contained two books: one with 125 fables and another with 95.

The discovery drew broad attention because it seemed to confirm conjectures made by generations of critics and brought a significant body of literary material to light. The preface presents the recovered fables as evidence for the antiquity and authenticity of much of the Aesopian tradition, while identifying Babrias as the earliest and most reliable collector of veritable Aesopian fables.

Lewis’s edition and the Townsend translation

The recovered fables were published with George Cornewall Lewis as editor and the Reverend James Davies as translator. The preface describes both as well qualified for the work. Lewis’s edition is listed among the sources for the translation by George Fyler Townsend: Babrii Fabulae Aesopeae, published at Oxford in 1846.

That entry is distinct from a second source by Lewis, Babrii Fabulae Aesopeae. E codice manuscripto partem secundam edidit, published in London in 1857. The dates and titles in Townsend’s source list place the 1846 publication within a continuing editorial effort to make Babrias’ fables available, rather than treating the manuscript’s recovery as a single, isolated event.

Place in the fables’ transmission

The book frames 1846 against a much longer history of oral transmission, collection, and publication. It says that the fables were first narrated by Aesop and passed down orally; Demetrius Phalereus was said to have made the first collection around 300 B.C. Later, Phaedrus adapted many into Latin verse, and Maximus Planudes compiled about 150 fables in the early fourteenth century. Isaac Nicholas Nevelet’s Mythologia Aesopica, published in 1610, had already included 43 fables from Babrias alongside material from other sources.

The Athos manuscript and its publication supplied an important new basis for assessing that layered tradition. The preface recounts earlier scholarly debate over whether Babrias had collected or authored the existing Aesopian fables, including Richard Bentley’s forceful claim for Babrias and subsequent contributions by other scholars. It presents the manuscript’s discovery as a major confirmation of the critics’ investigations, while describing Babrias as a collector rather than claiming that he originated every fable bearing Aesop’s name.