A didática dos bichos: moral e política em Fedro, Varrão e Virgílio

Abstract

It so happens that Western literature, since Classical Antiquity, has used the image of animals to convey veiled criticisms of real people. In the epodos of Archilochus, the poet, when claiming an unfulfilled marriage promise, takes on the figure of the fox, while he uses the lion to represent Neobula, the bride that was denied to him. Hesiod also, in Works and Days (vv. 202-212), used, in a fabled narrative, a possible criticism of the pride of kings. It is not, therefore, by chance that these bestial figures appear as elements of denunciation/criticism/exhortation; nor, as we have seen, is the assimilation of its presence to real contexts and people a novelty. The present dissertation presents a proposal for a comparative analysis of books III and IV of Virgil's Georgicon, books II and III of Varro's De Re Rustica and some fables by Phaedrus, which are distributed in all of the fabulist's books. Therefore, in the light of other disciplines (History, Archeology, Philosophy, Economics and Law), we present a historical-political analysis of the highlighted texts in order to understand how these texts relate to and reflect values and customs of Roman society. It must be pointed out, however, that the corpus chosen for our study uses the figure of animals, so that we can also reflect on how the three authors articulated anthropomorphizing allegories to reflect on Roman society and, sometimes, to denounce/criticize customs.