Babrias

, or Babrius, was a Greek poet who turned Esop’s fables into choliambics, that is, verses with an iambic foot in the fifth place, and a spondee in the sixth or last. Suidas frequently quotes him, but the age and country in which he lived are unknown. Avienus the fabulist, in Prsef. Fab. seems to intimate, that Babrius was prior to Phaedrus, who wrote under the reign of Augustus or Tiberius. Mr. | Tynvhitt, the learned author of the “Dissertatio de Babrio,” published at London in 1776, produces a passage from the Homeric lexicon of Apollonius, which appears to be a quotation from Babrius, and as Apollonius is supposed to have lived about the time of Augustus, or some what earlier, Babrius must have written before that period. From the fragments published in the above-mentioned work, Babrius appears to have been a valuable writer his representations are natural, his expressions lively, and his versification harmonious. ¹