The Convent of St. Laura is the Mount Athos monastery where Menoides found a manuscript of Babrias in 1844. In the book’s account of the transmission of Aesopian fable, the discovery connects a specific monastic setting with a long-running scholarly search: the codex strengthened the case for Babrias as a collector of fables and brought important new material into circulation.

Setting and Discovery

Menoides was searching for ancient manuscripts under a commission arranged at the suggestion of M. Villemain, France’s Minister of Public Instruction under King Louis Philippe. At the Convent of St. Laura, on Mount Athos, he came upon a manuscript that proved to be the long-sought choliambic version of Babrias. The account presents the find not as a planned excavation of this particular text, but as the result of a broader effort to locate ancient manuscripts.

The Manuscript

The codex was divided into two books: the first contained 125 fables, and the second 95, for a total of 220. Its significance lay in providing a substantial manuscript witness to Babrias’ fables, rather than merely another conjecture about their authorship or form. The book describes the discovery as confirming, in an unexpected way, the proposals advanced by generations of critics and as bringing valuable material to light concerning the antiquity and authenticity of much Aesopian fable.

Scholarly Afterlife

The recovered fables were soon published. Sir George Cornewall Lewis served as editor, and the Reverend James Davies translated them into English. The book consequently treats the manuscript’s discovery as a turning point in the recovery of Babrias: after centuries in which the text had been sought, Babrias emerged as an early and reliable collector of veritable Aesopian fables.

Place in the Transmission of Fable

The monastery’s importance in the account is textual and historical. The manuscript found there adds a new witness to a tradition the book traces from oral narration and early collections through later compilations and printed editions. Its discovery also complements Isaac Nicholas Nevelet’s 1610 Mythologia Aesopica, which had already included 43 fables attributed to Babrias; the Mount Athos codex supplied the long-sought choliambic version in manuscript form. The Convent of St. Laura thus enters the history of Aesopian literature through the preservation and recovery of a text that reshaped scholarly understanding of the tradition.