Avianus

(or Avianius), Flavius. A Latin fabulist, of whose works we have a collection of fortytwo fables in elegiac verse, whose composition may conjecturally be assigned to the fourth century A.D. They are dedicated in prose to a certain Theodosius, by some identified with Theodosius Macrobius, the author of the Saturnalia. The book was used in the schools down through the Middle Ages, during which it was much imitated, as in the Novus Avianus of Alexander Neckam, composed in the thirteenth century. Good texts of Avianus are those of Lachmann (Berlin, 1845), Fröhner (Leipzig, 1862), and Robinson Ellis, with apparatus criticus, commentary, excursus, and index (London, 1887). The earliest Novus Avianus has been edited by Grosse (Königsberg, 1868); and the fragments of Neckam's work may be found in Fröhner, p. 65.