The fable of The Fox, the Flies and the Hedgehog is ascribed to

Aesop's Fables Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a Slavery in ancient Greece, slave and storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 Before the Common Era, BCE. Of varied and unclear origins, the stor ...

. From its beginning it was applied satirically to political leaders and is numbered 427 in the

Perry Index The Perry Index is a widely used index of "Aesop's Fables" or "Aesopica", the fables credited to Aesop, the storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC. The index was created by Ben Edwin Perry, a professor of classics at the U ...

The fable

An enfeebled fox is plagued by flies, ticks or mosquitoes, of which a hedgehog offers to rid her. The fox refuses such help on the grounds that the insects have already gorged themselves on her blood and hardly trouble her now, but they would inevitably be succeeded by new swarms if removed. The fable is mentioned by

Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

in his work on

Rhetoric Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse ( trivium) along with grammar and logic/ dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or w ...

(II.20) as an example of Aesop's way of teaching a political lesson through a humorous example. The context in this case was said to be the trial of a

demagogue A demagogue (; ; ), or rabble-rouser, is a political leader in a democracy who gains popularity by arousing the common people against elites, especially through oratory that whips up the passions of crowds, Appeal to emotion, appealing to emo ...

; Aesop pointed out that, since self-interested politicians are a necessary evil, to replace one who has already exploited the state with others who have yet to satisfy their greed would only make the situation worse. The reason for the fox's enfeebled state is that, while crossing a river, she has been swept into the mud on the other bank and cannot free herself. These circumstances are repeated in the neo-Latin verse of

Gabriele Faerno The humanist scholar Gabriele Faerno, also known by his Latin name of Faernus Cremonensis, was born in Cremona about 1510 and died in Rome on 17 November 1561. He was a scrupulous textual editor and an elegant Latin poet who is best known now for ...

's fable collection (1563), which closes on the sentiment ::Who seeks a ruler to reverse ::Calls in another that is worse. Aristotle's version of the fable is also followed by

Samuel Croxall Samuel Croxall (c. 1688/9 – 1752) was an Anglican churchman, writer and translator, particularly noted for his edition of Aesop's Fables. Early career Samuel Croxall was born in 1688 or 1689 at Walton on Thames, where his father (also called Sa ...

in his prose collection of ''The Fables of Æsop'' (1722). The story in

La Fontaine's Fables Jean de La Fontaine collected fables from a wide variety of sources, both Western and Eastern, and adapted them into French free verse. They were issued under the general title of Fables in several volumes from 1668 to 1694 and are considered cla ...

(1694) is more or less the same, except that the fox has been wounded in the

chase Chase or CHASE may refer to: Businesses * Chase Bank, a national American financial institution * Chase UK, a British retail bank * Chase Aircraft (1943–1954), a defunct American aircraft manufacturer * Chase Coaches, a defunct bus operator in ...

. La Fontaine too mentions Aristotle and the political lesson that he draws, while the circumstances are repeated in Brooke Boothby's very short poetic version.

William Somervile William Somervile or Somerville (2 September 167517 July 1742) was an English poet who wrote in many genres and is especially remembered for "The Chace", in which he pioneered an early English georgic. Life Somervile, the eldest son of a long e ...

adapted the fable more long-windedly into "The wounded man and the swarm of flies", taking sixteen lines to relate the story told of a "Lazar" (leper) and fifteen to draw the moral.''Occasional Poems'' (1727)
p. 270
/ref>

References

External links

* Illustrations in books
16th–20th century
* French text of La Fontaine an
two illustrations from editions
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fox, the Flies and the Hedgehog, The Aesop's Fables La Fontaine's Fables