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Phaedrus

Phaedrus

c. 15 BCE–c. 50 CE · Rome

Phaedrus (active first half of the 1st century CE) was a Roman writer of fables in Latin verse, who adapted and expanded the tradition of Aesop's animal fables and added new ones of his own. His collections present moral lessons through short, pointed stories and were widely read in later centuries. He is unrelated to the figure of the same name in Plato's dialogue.

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Stop 1 of 1

RomeרומאItaly

We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.

About Rome

Rome, on the Tiber in central Italy, grew from an Iron Age settlement into the capital of the Roman Republic and then of an empire that by the 1st century CE ruled the whole Mediterranean. Its Jewish community, attested from the 2nd century BCE, is among the oldest in Europe. Christian tradition holds that the apostles Peter and Paul died there, and the city became the seat of the popes. After the Western Empire ended in 476 it passed to Gothic kings, to Byzantium and then to papal rule as capital of the Papal States, until it became the capital of unified Italy in 1871. Vatican City, independent since 1929, lies within it.

Across the traditions, in Rome at the same time

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In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Phaedrus’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Phaedrus’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(1)