Bodleian Library

The Bodleian Library enters the book’s account of Aesopian literature as the Oxford repository of a manuscript of Babrias. In 1776, Thomas Tyrwhitt published a collection of Babrias’s fables in choliambic meter from a manuscript held there, making the library a concrete link between surviving manuscript evidence and the scholarly reconstruction of the fable tradition.

Manuscript and Publication

The library’s role is described through Tyrwhitt’s work. After earlier scholars debated whether Babrias had composed or collected fables associated with Aesop, Tyrwhitt defended that attribution in a dissertation published in 1776 and printed fables in their choliambic meter from a manuscript in the Bodleian Library. The manuscript thus supplied textual material for a printed scholarly edition, not merely a reference point in the debate.

Place in the Recovery of Babrias

Tyrwhitt’s publication formed one stage in a longer inquiry into the origins and transmission of the fables. The book recounts that critics had proposed Babrias as an author or collector, while Richard Bentley argued that many existing versions could be reconstructed as Babrias’s verse with slight verbal changes. Tyrwhitt’s manuscript-based edition added evidence to this discussion, though the account presents it as one contribution in an evolving scholarly argument rather than as the final discovery.

From Manuscript Evidence to a Wider Collection

The Bodleian manuscript belongs to a broader history of assembling and comparing texts. The book traces fables from oral transmission and early collections through later adaptations and printed editions. Isaac Nicholas Nevelet’s 1610 Mythologia Aesopica combined the Planudes collection with previously unpublished fables from Vatican manuscripts, material attributed to Aphthonius and Babrias, and Latin versions by Phaedrus, Avienus, and other writers. The Bodleian evidence fits within this expanding effort to identify, preserve, and publish versions associated with the ancient fable tradition.

Significance and Limits of the Account

The library’s significance here is specific: it preserved a manuscript from which Tyrwhitt published Babrias’s fables, thereby supporting the textual study of their meter and attribution. The book does not describe the manuscript’s physical features, its present condition, or its subsequent history. It presents the Bodleian Library chiefly as a custodian of evidence that helped scholars move from conjecture about Babrias toward the examination and publication of surviving texts.