Boris Artzybasheff, Stag Looking Into Water, 1933. https://www.vintag.es/2024/03/boris-artzybasheff.html.
Echoes in the Forest: Fable Tradition and Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Phaedrus 1.12
By Alethea Lam
Phaedrus opens Book 1 of his fables with the phrase Aesopus auctor, anchoring his work in the animal fable tradition of the legendary Greek storyteller. With this phrase, the Latin poet credits Aesop as the pioneer of the genre itself as well as the original narrator of the fables he is about to retell (Phaedrus 1.1.1). Phaedrus’s poems exhibit the classic characteristics of animal fable, namely morals communicated in promythia and epimythia, instructive narratives to demonstrate these lessons, and recurring semi-anthropomorphized animal characters whose behavior reflects stereotypes of their species. While in later books Phaedrus expands his horizons by introducing humans and deities, lifting stories from sources other than the Aesopic tradition, and even featuring contemporary historical figures, Book 1 of his work largely adheres to traditional fable-telling.1 Poem 1.12, the story of a deer who sees his reflection in a spring, finds parallels in other fable collections, namely Babrius’s Fable 43 and Aesopica 74. The poem’s plot and themes also evoke comparisons to the myths of Actaeon and Narcissus as portrayed in book III of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. That epic also deals with the general concept of anthropomorphized animals, as humans are frequently turned to beasts. However, while Ovid’s creatures retain the mental faculties of a human, they lose the power of speech, the most strikingly human attribute of Phaedran animals. Despite differences in genre and treatment of animals between Ovid’s Actaeon and Narcissus narratives and Phaedrus 1.12, the tales share thematic elements such as self-evaluation, hunting, flight, and storytelling. Their similarities and contrasts highlight aspects of the messages Phaedrus communicates in this fable. This essay will examine 1.12 on its own, within the Phaedran context, in comparison to other Aesopic fables, and finally alongside the Metamorphoses myths.
Poem 1.12: The Deer at the Spring
At fifteen lines, 1.12 is one of the longer poems in Book 1, presenting a clear, but perhaps overly repeated, moral. Phaedrus begins with a brief metadiscursive promythium stating that the following narratio demonstrates the frequent inverse correlation between how much something is valued—whether it is praised or disdained—and how useful it is, a sentiment echoed with similar verbiage in the final two lines (1.12.2). In addition, praise and disdain appear in lines 5-6, when the deer, having spotted his reflection in the spring he just drank from, admires the appearance of his horns but finds fault with how his legs look. The significance of usefulness comes into play in the second half, when a hunting party frightens the deer into a different setting; he discovers the hard way that legs help and horns hinder him in the forest, and says as much in the epimythium as he is devoured by hunting dogs. The first two words of the poem, laudatis utiliora, are found in different forms—utilia and laudaram—in the deer’s last words, cementing praise and usefulness as main themes alongside disdain (1.12.1, 14-15). While the trifold repetition of the moral in promythium, narrative, and epimythium feels somewhat redundant, there is a progression of the deer’s role in each section: the promythium has nothing to do with him; in the narrative, Phaedrus reports that the beast praises (laudat) and disparages (vituperat) but omits his actual words; finally, the deer speaks directly to the reader for the epimythium (1.12.5-6). This increase in the deer’s agency contrasts with his fortune, which deteriorates over the course of the poem. In the end, the only consequence of the deer’s more active role in delivering the moral is so he can express regret that his understanding comes too late, a cautionary tale for readers (1.12.13-15). Phaedrus’s rendition of the deer at the spring revolves around the moral in its promythium, narrative, and epimythium.
Poem 1.12 sees Phaedrus characterize an animal according to its physical characteristics and role in society, a practice common across animal fable. The deer himself focuses on his horns and spindly legs, the most striking aspects of his appearance—the horns for their unusual size and shape, the legs for their swiftness. Phaedrus leverages this contrast as one of usefulness, since the deer’s horns are at best ornamental and at worst a liability, while his legs are an invaluable asset except in the mirror. The irony of a single animal possessing these contrasting physical features is on full display in this poem, as the deer erroneously chooses to value appearance over practicality. The deer is also stereotyped as frightened, fleet-footed prey because humans typically encounter him in the context of the hunt. These characteristics define the behavior of the deer in 1.12: venantum subito vocibus conterritus… cursu levi canes elusit (“suddenly terrified by the hunters’ voices… he fled the dogs with nimble speed,” 1.12.7-9). Overall, Phaedrus creates a character with stereotypical qualities drawn from physical and social reality, making his story easy to understand without additional explanation of the deer’s personality, abilities, and emotions.
Similarly, Phaedrus incorporates physical characteristics of the spring into its role in the story. While the fons is not an animal, Phaedrus uses the same method to assign its qualities and gives it the position of a main character in the first line of the narrative portion along with the deer, establishing it as a significant element. Water’s ability to function as a mirror not only acts as a plot device but also taps into its deceptive qualities metaphorically. Just as a straight stick half underwater appears bent, depth perception in water is distorted, and ripples warp reflected images, the deer’s image in the water does not reflect reality because it only reveals appearance, not usefulness. Thus, the physical properties of water shape its portrayal and role in the poem.
The Mirror and Deer in Phaedrus
In the context of Phaedrus’s work in general, both the deer and the water-mirror are recurring “characters,” exhibiting general similarities across various fables. Multiple poems in Book 1 involve animals drinking at bodies of water or otherwise interacting with it, reinforcing its dangerous, deceptive, and reflective qualities.2 Of these, the flumen of Poem 1.4 plays the most similar role to 1.12’s fons. Here, Phaedrus explicitly equates water with a mirror: a dog carrying meat in its mouth lympharum in speculo vidit simulacrum suum and drops his burden to seize what he sees in the mouth of the “other dog” in the river (“sees his own likeness in the mirror of water,” 1.4.3). This line parallels 1.12.4—in liquore vidit effigiem suam—almost perfectly in word order, meaning, and lexical choice (“he sees his own image in the liquid”). Like the deer, this dog incorrectly values two things, in this case the food quem tenebat and quem petebat, and pays for it, albeit not as drastically (1.4.6-7). He also does not realize that what he sees in the water is a reflection, instead thinking a second dog and piece of meat exist. This more extreme misidentification surfaces in other Book 1 poems as well.
A similar line to 1.12.4 and 1.4.3 appears in poem 1.20, in which some dogs, striving to reach a hide at the bottom of a river, burst themselves trying to drink it dry. When compared to 1.4.3 and 1.12.4, the line corium depressum in fluvio viderunt canes raises interesting questions given its structure (1.20.3). The mirror-image element is not present in this poem, which may explain the substitution of canes at the end of the line. However, from a syntactic perspective the replacement of the reflection is the direct object corium; taken further, perhaps the hide the dogs see is a representation of themselves—in the future. That the dogs were rupti—burst—suggests their skins, along with the rest of their bodies, were torn open, thereby becoming hides. The distortion, then, is not visual in this case but temporal. In addition, this reading indicates the dogs fail to recognize a reflection as what it is, namely themselves. While it might seem possible that 1.20 is simply referencing the difficulty of underwater depth perception, depth is, in fact, irrelevant to the story; drinking would not accomplish the dogs’ goal in a shallow or deep river.
The proposition that animals always see a distortion of themselves in water also requires a more imaginative approach to two more poems in Book 1. The wolf of 1.1 may see the water as physically agitated (turbulentam, 5) because he himself is already emotionally stirred up (incitatus, 4). After all, as the lamb points out, the water cannot actually have been stirred up, at least not by him. Meanwhile, the dogs of 1.25 drink while running in order to avoid crocodiles, thereby saving themselves. However, their safety might also be due to the fact that they have no time to see their reflection in the Nile; if they were to look down, perhaps they, like the dogs of 1.4 and 1.20, would see something confusing which would lead to their demise.
However, 3.8 suggests the viewer’s interpretation of his or her reflection is another misleading factor. A father advises his handsome son and ugly daughter to use the speculum daily so the first will not ruin his beauty with wicked deeds and the second will overcome her appearance with good behavior (14-16). Though the children have a real mirror instead of deceptive water, they still initially react wrongly: hic… iactat; illa irascitur (“he boasts; she is angry,” 6). Thus, mirrors can be useful, but only to a discerning viewer. This stipulation is emphasized by the fact that the father, an authority figure and human being, is the one to derive good lessons from the mirror. The animals in Phaedrus, who are less intelligent beings viewing a less reliable reflective surface in comparison to these human children, are even more incapable of interpreting what they see correctly. This aligns with the Book 1 fables as another episode of failure to literally or metaphorically recognize oneself to one’s detriment.
Phaedrus unfolds his characterization of the deer as fearful, unintelligent prey across multiple fables concentrated in Book 1. The animal’s legs and horns encapsulate his assets and liabilities in hunting contexts. The deer, or rather the corpse of one, makes his first appearance in 1.5 when an animal hunting party divides his carcass. In this poem as well as 2.8, he is explicitly referred to as praedam (1.5.11, 2.8.27). As a constantly hunted animal, the deer is also known for his swiftness, as showcased in 1.12 as well as 1.16, where a sheep points out he is wont to fugere veloci impetu (1.16.6). This sheep escapes the trap of the deer and wolf, though in the very next poem she falls victim to another trickster duo, this time a dog and a wolf.3 This juxtaposition suggests the deer is the weak link of the plan; his attempted deception of even a helpless sheep is easily thwarted. His lack of good sense also features in 2.8, when he hides himself from hunters in a herd of oxen. Though initially successful, his attempt at concealment fails because of his alta… cornua, resulting in his death, like the deer at the spring (2.8.25). His obviously poor decision-making, driven by blind fear (caeco timore, 2.8.3) like the conterritus deer of 1.12, is called out by the oxen, who tell him he is running to his death. This fable underscores how wrong 1.12’s deer is to exult in his horns, raising questions as to what they signify in contrast to the swift legs he is ashamed of because they reflect his status as perennial prey. Phaedrus does not elaborate on this, possibly because the meaning of horns is already clear from the fable tradition. Therefore, we move on to an examination of non-Phaedran fables, including other stories featuring deer and alternative versions of the deer at the spring.
Deer Fables in Greek: Babrius and Aesopica
Like other Phaedrus deer poems, Babrius Fable 95 and Aesopica 75, 76, and 77 show that the deer in Phaedrus 1.12 is typical and emphasize other characteristics readers of Phaedrus would have been familiar with. Babrius 95 revolves around a fox’s quest to help a sick lion devour a deer by claiming the lion has hand-picked the cervid as the next king of the beasts. The fox claims the lion finds the deer worthy because, among other attributes, “his horns are fearful to all creeping things and are like the trees with their branches” (Perry, p. 119). This description parallels Phaedrus’s fable, which calls the horns ramosa, and suggests the deer prizes his horns because they are imposing and unique (“branching,” 1.12.5). As a weak and foolish animal, it is natural for the deer to value the one physical aspect which sets him apart and perhaps even makes him seem powerful. The fox’s stratagem initially succeeds as his target, “puffed up with conceit,” comes to the lion’s lair but is initially saved by his fleetness of foot when the lion attacks too hastily, only wounding the deer (Perry, p. 119). The fox fools him into returning via insults, calling him “very untrustworthy and light-headed” and telling him not to “be timid and afraid, like a sheep” (Perry, p. 121). As the lion carves up his prey, the fox steals its heart for himself; when the lion misses it, the fox claims the deer never had one, for “what kind of heart could he… have who came a second time into a lion’s den?” (Perry, p. 121). That the deer is susceptible to insults targeting his courage and intelligence references the fact that he is in fact stupid and easily frightened, and the fox’s quip is another dig at his smarts because the heart is associated with intelligence (Perry, p. 121). The three Aesopica poems also showcase the deer’s questionable discernment: in 75, he watches for threats from land and is killed from sea; in 76, he flees hunters only to be devoured by a lion; and in 77, he eats through the leaves hiding him from hunters, revealing himself (Gibbs). Each dying deer laments his fate, acknowledging his error in judgment. Overall, various classical fables characterize the deer as fearful and foolish, but also proud, a quality symbolized by his horns.
Besides Phaedrus 1.12, the fable of the deer at the spring is also narrated in Babrius 43 and Aesopica 74. Comparisons between these three retellings shed light on what Phaedrus deliberately chose to include and omit. In terms of structure, neither Babrius 43 nor Aesopica 74 feature a promythium, instead including an epimythium after the deer’s dying words. Aesopica 74’s moral is similar to that of Phaedrus 1.12, touching on the themes of praise and usefulness, but Babrius draws a different lesson: “In taking stock of your affairs do not suppose that anything can be relied upon as sure before the event. On the other hand do not give up or lose hope. So deceptive sometimes are our confident expectations” (Perry, p. 59). Babrius, then, emphasizes the deception aspect of the fable, while Phaedrus chooses to foreground the deer’s flawed self-evaluation. The Latin poet also deliberately gives the deer the final word by moving the moral to the promythium, creating a progression in the animal’s role in communicating the message. Other differences include the setting of and reason for the deer’s capture. Aesopica 74 sees the deer flee to “the marsh by the river” and suggests the deer’s fatal mistake was to keep running, which he did because he was not thinking (Gibbs). Babrius, on the other hand, writes that the deer fled over the plain and into the forest and that the deer’s “excessive pride” brought “retribution which keeps watch upon the things of the earth,” introducing a metaphysical element (Perry, p. 57). Phaedrus opts for the forest path and blames neither the deer’s thoughtlessness nor his pride, though both tendencies are on display. Moreover, Phaedrus’s emphasis on the hunting dogs rather than human hunters appears unique; Babrius 43 groups the hounds with hunting-nets as mere instruments to humans, while Aesopica 74 omits them altogether (Perry, p. 59). Many of the elements in which Phaedrus 1.12 deviates from other Aesopic versions find commonalities in the Actaeon and Narcissus myths, to which we now turn our attention.
Parallels and Contrasts in Phaedrus 1.12 and Metamorphoses
Ovid’s version of the Actaeon and Narcissus stories share the setting and situation of Phaedrus 1.12, with some interesting contrasts. Read alongside these myths, Phaedrus’s choice of the word fons and inclusion of the forest in the fable becomes significant. As Ovid uses multiple synonyms for water in his lengthy narratives, it is noteworthy that the Metamorphoses poet does not use rivus, flumen, or fluvius, all of which appear in other Phaedran water-mirror poems, to refer to the bodies of water where Actaeon sees Diana bathing and Narcissus falls in love with himself. It seems, then, that Phaedrus deliberately employs fons, which Ovid uses in both myths, rather than the other terms to link this poem with these Metamorphoses episodes. His choice of forest over Aesopica 74’s river and marsh further anchors him in Actaeon and Narcissus’s world, and his emphasis on the hounds rather than the hunters aligns with Actaeon’s story. Phaedrus and Ovid both juxtapose this locus amoenus with the chaos of the hunt: dogs pursue and seize the Phaedran deer and Actaeon, while Narcissus fugit Echo and luserat other would-be lovers but is captured by his own reflection (Met. 3.390, 403). Phaedrus 1.12 resembles the Actaeon hunt plotwise and echoes the Narcissus hunt with similar vocabulary: the deer fugere coepit and canes elusit (8-9). However, there are some significant differences between Phaedrus and Ovid’s settings and plots. The mythical beings who pervade the world of Metamorphoses—Olympian deities, nymphs, river gods—are absent from Phaedrus, whose only fantastic touch in 1.12 and most other poems is the presence of anthropomorphic animals. This contrast, in addition to Babrius 43’s suggestion of supernatural retribution, indicates Phaedrus deliberately chooses not to assign blame to outside forces. Furthermore, Diana engineers Actaeon’s downfall and Rhamnusia Narcissus’s, but there is no such actor in Phaedrus 1.12 to bring about a reversal of fortune. Phaedrus’s deer was never safe; nothing about his situation needed to change for him to become prey. Both Actaeon and Narcissus’s stories are ironic—the hunter is hunted; he who flees lovers experiences unrequited love—but the deer’s fate is apt for his kind, as almost all the deer in fables die. The setting and scene of 1.12 parallel those of Ovid’s Actaeon and Narcissus narratives, but the fable’s lack of metaphysical elements and divinely influenced turning point are distinctly Phaedran.
The assignment of fault across the different versions of the deer at the spring and the Actaeon and Narcissus narratives sheds light on Phaedrus’s worldview as reflected in 1.12 as well as the rest of his work. Ovid is adamant that Actaeon did not deserve death, writing that stumbling upon Diana bathing is Fortunae crimen and error rather than scelus, lessening its severity and blaming supernatural forces (Met. 3.141-142). Diana’s curse in 3.192-193, along with Tiresias’s prophecy in 3.348 and the prayer to Rhamnusia in 3.405 that doom Narcissus, suggest the deaths of both Actaeon and Narcissus were out of their hands. However, Narcissus is more culpable: Rhamnusia exacts retribution against hubris, and Narcissus is certainly guilty of that (tam dura superbia, 3.354). Additionally, the would-be lover who prays to Rhamnusia is described as despectus, which Phaedrus references in the deer’s lament: utilia… fuerint quae despexeram (Met. 3.404, Phaedrus 1.12.14). It takes pride to scorn something, and as established earlier, the horns which the deer so admires are a symbol of pride though he has no intellect or might to be proud of. Like Narcissus, then, the deer’s excessive pride comes before his downfall; like Actaeon, however, his luctus, a term which appears in both stories, is in some ways inevitable—Actaeon because his misstep was unintentional, the deer because deer are always hunted (“grief,” Met. 3.139, Phaedrus 1.12.15). By omitting Babrius’s element of metaphysical retribution, which would have paralleled the Narcissus narrative,4 Phaedrus makes it so that the deer’s misevaluation of his physical features has no bearing on his chances of escape and thus his pride is not truly at fault. While the ideas that the deer’s fate is sealed but also that his pride makes him deserving of it seem conflicting, they are consistent with the worldview expressed in Phaedrus’s corpus at large. In his fable-world, weak and foolish animals are consistently taken advantage of by their stronger, cleverer counterparts, but any attempts to elevate themselves, usually pridefully, are mocked.5 The poet expresses no outrage at this injustice, simply advising his readers to understand this is how the world works. By including similarities and differences to Actaeon and Narcissus, Phaedrus illustrates both these aspects of his worldview in poem 1.12.
Phaedrus also uses the themes of admiration, fear, and flight from Ovid to develop the deer further, contrasting the deer’s behavior with that of a human-turned-deer. The deer of 1.12, who marvels (mirans) at his horns is, of course, misguided; Actaeon, who retains human cognition in metamorphosis, perceptively marvels (miratur) at his newfound speed instead (Phaedrus 1.12.5, Met. 3.199). In fact, when the man-deer cornua vidit in unda his reaction is dismay, supporting the idea from Phaedrus 3.8 that humans better interpret reflections (Met. 3.200). However, Actaeon’s physical form also causes him to take on deer characteristics. Ovid mentions additus… pavor est alongside the deer’s physical changes, as showing fear is one of the animal’s defining characteristics (3.194-198). While that fear usually results in thoughtless flight because deer are foolish, Actaeon initially hesitates, trying to decide if he should seek refuge in human society or the forest (3.204-205). Though this deliberation helps the hounds find him, it shows he thinks before acting, while normal deer do not, reinforcing the stereotype of the deer’s foolishness. Actaeon’s short-lived stint as a deer demonstrates the talking deer of fable does not have a human mind, as the two marvel and flee in different ways.
Meanwhile, Ovid’s treatment of mirrors and echoes associates desire with visual and auditory reflection. Like the visual reflection of water, echoes produce a distorted version of the original. Echo’s clumsy pursuit of Narcissus demonstrates this well when the nymph turns his vehement rejection—emoriar, quam sit tibi copia nostri—into her desperate plea of sit tibi copia nostri (3.391-392). Both the origin of echoes and the water-mirror Narcissus perishes at are associated with desire and rejection; Echo (among other suitors) desired and was rejected by Narcissus, who in turn desired and was rejected by his own reflection. Moreover, Narcissus and the deer at the spring come to the water to satisfy a craving—thirst—only for an unquenchable one to spring up when they look down. The spring is thus fallaci, or treacherous, in multiple ways (Met. 3.427). The Ovidian angle adds an element of unfulfillable desire to the symbolism of the already deceptive Phaedran mirror, making it even more dangerous.
Finally, the treatment of speech, silence, and storytelling in the Actaeon and Narcissus narratives addresses Phaedrus’s innovative choice to include the moral as a promythium. Juno partially silences Echo because the nymph used her chattering to help Jupiter engage in affairs, while Diana completely silences Actaeon specifically so he cannot tell the story of seeing her bathing (Met. 3.192-193). Both Echo and Actaeon suffer and perish because they cannot speak as they did before, suggesting a correlation between silence and helplessness. Ovid dwells extensively on Actaeon’s futile attempts to speak, recording his unuttered exclamations as direct speech (3.201, 230). These silent shouts, contrasted with Actaeon’s effective commands at the start of his story, heighten the association between silence and lack of power, particularly when he cannot call off his dogs. Echo, however, gains something from her curse: the last word. Actaeon cannot tell his story, so the air resounds with the barks of hounds rather than human speech; Echo, though dead, speaks directly to the audience as she repeats Narcissus’s final utterance (3.231, 501). Thus Echo actually has more agency in telling Narcissus’s story than the youth himself, and certainly more than Actaeon in his own tale. The theme of storytelling also appears explicitly in Phaedrus 1.12’s promythium and implicitly in the poet’s structure choices. Phaedrus writes that the fable is a witness to its moral (testis, 1.12.2). The deer seems to be the actual witness, however, as he both experiences the plot and directly delivers the moral in the epimythium. By converting the original epimythium into a promythium, Phaedrus gives the deer the final word, similarly to how Ovid brings back Echo’s voice at the end of Narcissus’s narrative. Phaedrus thus makes the deer’s words an echo, which, if seen in the Ovidian perspective, gives the deer more agency in telling the story. The Phaedran deer, Actaeon, Narcissus, and Echo all perish in their respective narratives, but given the significance of being able to pass on stories in the Ovidian narratives, Echo and Phaedrus’s deer survive through their voices because they actively participate in transmitting stories. Comparisons to Ovid thus explain the theme of narrative in and placement of 1.12’s promythium, which allow the deer, doomed in life, to live on through his voice echoing through the forest.
Phaedrus’s fable of the deer at the spring is deceptively complex in its portrayal of the deer, water, and other themes. While the fable makes sense on its own, examining it in the context of Phaedrus’s corpus and other Aesopic fable collections reveals more aspects of the character of the deer and the water motif. Finally, Phaedrus alludes to Ovid’s renditions of the Actaeon and Narcissus myths, drawing out his own worldview through contrasts and parallels in the narrative setting, depiction of deer and reflections, and themes of guilt and storytelling.
Alethea Lam (College ‘25) is a student at the University of Pennsylvania studying Classical Studies and Linguistics.
Endnotes
- For instance, 4.26 draws from Cicero’s De Oratore. The emperors Augustus and Tiberius make appearances in 3.10 and 2.5, respectively.
- I have left out Poems 1.2, 1.6, and 1.30 in this discussion because the bodies of water in these fables function simply as the home of frogs. The water motif in the poems examined appears different from the one in these frog poems.
- It cannot be certain that Phaedrus placed these poems consecutively because some poems of his have been transmitted separate from his five books but originally belonged to them. However, Book 1 is the longest and most complete volume. Even if 1.16 and 1.17 were not consecutive, they would still have been close to each other.
- Rhamnusia is also known by the name Nemesis; the term in Babrius’s version of the deer at the spring which Perry translates as “retribution” is also νέμεσις. Phaedrus’s omission of this supernatural force or character is thus all the more glaring.
- See Phaedrus 1.1 and 1.3 for an example of each.
Bibliography
Aesop’s Fables. Translated by Laura Gibbs. Oxford: Oxford University Press (World’s Classics), 2002. http://www.mythfolklore.net/aesopica/index.htm.
Babrius, Phaedrus. Fables. Translated by Ben Edwin Perry. Loeb Classical Library 436. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965.
Ovid. Metamorphoses. The Latin Library. https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/ovid/ovid.met3.shtml.