Avianus – Studies on his Pre-Texts and their Processing

Probably around 400 AD, the Roman author Avian composed a work consisting of 42 fables written in elegiac distichs. He thus followed the ancient poets Phaedrus and Babrios, who also made their works consist exclusively of versified fables - the one in Latin Senares, the other in Greek Choljambs.

The assumption of this thesis is that Avian consciously became dependent on his two predecessors and thus adopted traits both in content and form from them. In his Prose Praefatio, he explicitly names Phaedrus and Babrios as predecessors alongside Aesop, Socrates and Horace.

Avian's fable corpus can therefore be placed in the context of the Autonomy of heteronomous texts in many ways. There is a particular dependence on the fables of Babrios. By expanding as well as updating some of his texts, he undertakes an interpretation and explanation of them. It is thus not only a Collectio of ancient fables, but also a Commentarius and a Renarratio of Greek fables in Latin. Here, Avian's work is heteronomous to that of Babrios in terms of content, but it also breaks away from it in the sense of an Aemulatio. Formally, Avian's fables also seem to be dependent on Phaedrus' work, which corresponds to the rhetorical-compositional ideal of the Augustan poets. In a sense, Avian follows this ideal in imitation of Phaedrus.

Furthermore, Avian's separation from his models is an essential part of this thesis. Not only the selection and rearrangement, but also the use of such fables, whose models are completely unknown to us today, if they did not even come from Avian himself, are characteristics of his work.

After a methodical introduction that combines literary-compositional and fable-specific aspects, this thesis will open up a formal-aesthetic perspective on Avian's work, show its dependence as well as its novelty compared to its predecessors and thus expand our picture of the late antique fabulist.