The homing instinct. A folklore theme in Phaedrus, App.Perott.16 Perry / 14 Postgate

Abstract

This paper examines a diffusionist view shared by several classical scholars and folklorists. The ‘popular theme’ cast into Latin senarii by the fabulist Phaedrus in the early 1st century A.D. which appears in modern editions as ‘Appendix Perottina’ 16 Perry / 14 Postgage has, it is supposed, been transmitted to modern West Europe, where it is to be identified in a set of subliterary ‘versions’. The counter-suggestion made here is that (1) this supposition is methodologically dubious and (2) that a close understanding of the nature and history of Phaedrus' collection of fabulae makes it unlikely. The study is also intended to notice some of the central problems, procedural and practical, which are to be encountered in such investigations into folkloric subliterature.