| Fables were a significant part of the Latin curriculum for nineteen hundred years. The purpose of this study was to determine the reasons for their long tenure, their functions in the curriculum, and the instructional methods associated with them. The investigation resulted in a history of the Latin fables as a textbook.;Three major groups of fables were researched, namely, those of Aesop, Avianus, and Phaedrus. Data were collected from Latin textbooks, teacher's manuals, and educational treatises. The study was divided into four historical periods: Roman, early medieval, late medieval, and modern.;The fables were employed at elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels of instruction, and typically they were used to teach two or more of the following: comprehension of continuous Latin text, oral pronunciation, grammar, writing skills traditional to Rhetoric, moral behavior, exegesis, and prosody. However, until the late eighteenth century, all school literature had a moral function, and therefore, the Latin fables were not unique in this respect.;In Rhetoric, the fables were part of the ancient progymnasmata, which were employed until the end of the seventeenth century. These fable writing exercises were less rigorous in the medieval centuries than in the Roman period. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the use of Aphthonius' Progymnasmata stimulated a radical change in the fable exercise, making it a small speech. With the rise of the vernaculars in the seventeenth century, fables were dropped completely from Latin composition.;The instructional techniques for teaching the comprehension of continuous Latin text included construing, parsing, memorizing, recitation, using vernacular translations, oral and silent reading. Construing and parsing were the cornerstones of the sixteenth century grammar/translation method. However, the various procedures of the method were eliminated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries leaving only the learning of grammar rules and deciphering Latin text through those rules.;In the modern era, the fables were entirely eliminated from the curriculum. Several factors contributed: changes in the Rhetoric curriculum, fewer school years devoted to Latin, and new college requirements dictated to the lower schools. Consequently, the Latin curriculum was reduced to the teaching of basic grammar, and the fables vanished along with the rest of elementary Latin literature. |
