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PFORTA, or SCHULPFORTA , formerly a Cistercian monastery dating from 1140, and now a celebrated German public school. It is in the Prussian province of Saxony, on the Saale, 2 M. S.W. of Naumburg. The remains of the monastery include the 13th century Gothic church, recently restored, the Romanesque chapel (12th century) and other buildings now used as dormitories, lecture rooms, &c. There is also the Furstenhaus, built in 1573. Schulpforta was one of the three Furstenschulen founded in 1543 by Maurice duke, and later elector, of Saxony, the two others being at Grimma and at Meissen. The property of the dissolved monastery provided a good revenue for the new educationaI foundation,which now amounts to about X15,000 a year. Free education is provided for 140 boys, the total number of pupils being 185. After being in the possession of Saxony, Pforta passed to Prussia in 1815, and since this date the school has been entirely reorganized.
charioteer and favourite of Gaius. The fourth book is dedicated to Particulo, who seems to have dabbled in literature. The dates of their publication are unknown, but Seneca, writing between A.D. 41 and 43 (Consol. ad Polyb. 27), knows nothing of Phaedrus, and it is probable that he had published nothing then. His work shows little or no originality; he simply versified in iambic trimeters the fables current in his day under the name of "Aesop," interspersing them with anecdotes drawn from daily life, history and mythology. He tells his fable and draws the moral with businesslike directness and simplicity; his language is terse and clear, but thoroughly prosaic, though it occasionally attains a dignity bordering on eloquence. His Latin is correct, and, except for an excessive and peculiar use of abstract words, shows hardly anything that might not have been written in the Augustan age. From a literary point of view Phaedrus is inferior to Babrius, and to his own imitator, La Fontaine; he lacks the quiet picturesqueness and pathos of the former, and the exuberant vivacity and humour of the latter. Though he frequently refers to the envy and detraction which pursued him, Phaedrus seems to have attracted little attention in antiquity. He is mentioned by' Martial (iii. 20, 5), who imitated some of his verses, and by Avianus. Prudentius must have read him, for he imitates one of his lines (Prud. Cath. vii. 115; cf. Phaedrus,
iv. 6, so).
The first edition of the five books of Phaedrus was published by Pithou at Troyes in 1596 from a manuscript now in the possession of the marquis of Rosanbo. In the beginning of the 18th century there was discovered at Parma a MS. of Perotti (1430-1480), arch-bishop of Siponto, containing sixty-four fables of Phaedrus, of which some thirty were new. These new fables were first published at Naples by Cassitto in 1808, and afterwards (much more correctly) by Jannelli in 18o9. Both editions were superseded by the discovery of a much better preserved MS. of Perotti in the Vatican, published by Angelo Mai in 1831. For some time the authenticity of these new fables was disputed, but they are now generally accepted, and with justice, as genuine fables of Phaedrus. They do not form a sixth book, for we know from Avianus that Phaedrus wrote five books only, but it is impossible to assign them to their original places in the five books. They are usually printed as an appendix.
In the middle ages Phaedrus exercised a considerable influence through the prose versions of his fables which were current, though his own works and even his name were forgotten. Of these prose versions the oldest existing seems to be that known as the " Anonymus Nilanti," so called because first edited by Nilant at Leiden in 1709 from a MS. of the 13th century. It approaches the text of Phaedrus so closely that it was probably made directly from it. Of the sixty-seven fables which it contains thirty are derived from lost fables of Phaedrus. But the largest and most influential of the prose versions of Phaedrus is that which bears the name of Romulus. It contains eighty-three fables, is as old as the loth century, and seems to have been based on a still earlier prose version, which, under the name of " Aesop," and addressed to one Rufus, may have been made in the Carolingian period or even earlier. About this Romulus nothing is known. The collection of fables in the Weissenburg (now Wolfenbiittel) MS. is based on the same version as Romulus. These three prose versions contain in all one hundred distinct fables, of which fifty-six are derived from the existing and the remaining forty -four presumably from lost fables of Phaedrus. Some scholars, as Burmann, Dressler and L. Muller, have tried to restore these lost fables by versifying the prose versions.
The collection bearing the name of Romulus became the source from which, during the second half of the middle ages, almost all the collections of Latin fables in prose and verse were wholly or partially drawn . A 12th-century version of the first three books of Romulus in elegiac verse enjoyed a wide popularity, even into the Renaissance. Its author (generally referred to since the edition of Nevelet in 1610 as the " Anonymus Neveleti ") was long unknown, but Hervieux has shown grounds for identifying him with Walther of England, chaplain to Henry II. and afterwards archbishop of Palermo.
Another version of Romulus in Latin elegiacs was made by Alexander Neckam, born at St Albans in 1157. Amongst the collections partly derived from Romulus the most famous is probably that in French verse by Marie de France. About 1200 a collection of fables in Latin prose, based partly on Romulus, was made by the Cistercian monk Odo of Sherrington; they have a strong medieval and clerical tinge. In 1370 Gerard of Minden wrote a poetical version of Romulus in Low German.
Since Pithou's edition in 1596 Phaedrus has been often edited and translated; among the editions may be mentioned those of Burmann (1718 and 1727), Bentley (1726), Schwabe (18o6), Berger de Xivrey (183o), Orelli (1832), Eyssenhardt (1867), L. Muller (1877), Rica (1885), and above all that of L. Havet (Paris, 1895). For the
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