The original collection apparently included two hundred fables in addition to the two prologues. Internal evidence from the text (that is, analyses of language and meter) together with the external evidence (that is, the earliest fragments of the text preserved on papyrus and wax tablets, datable to within approximately a half-century) indicate that the
Mythiambi were composed sometime in the second half of the second century
A.D. Babrius is a Roman gentile name, and the fabulist was either the Hellenized descendant of Roman forebears or the offspring of a freedman who had taken a Roman name at the time of his manumission. Some scholars have held that Babrius was himself of Roman nationality and that his fables show the influence of the Latin language and its verse forms. That view is based on an analysis of the language and meter of the Mythiambi, which in fact proves the opposite: namely, that Babrius was for all intents and purposes a Greek writer working in a Greek literary and poetic tradition. It has been suggested by those who believe Babrius to be Roman that his full name was Valerius Babrius. But this assumption, based on the flimsiest of evidence, has now been proved false.
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