A wolf in sheep's clothing is an idiom from
Jesus
Jesus (AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and many Names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament, other names and titles, was a 1st-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the Jesus in Chris ...
's
Sermon on the Mount
The Sermon on the Mount ( anglicized from the Matthean Vulgate Latin section title: ) is a collection of sayings spoken by Jesus of Nazareth found in the Gospel of Matthew (chapters 5, 6, and 7). that emphasizes his moral teachings. It is th ...
as narrated in the
Gospel of Matthew
The Gospel of Matthew is the first book of the New Testament of the Bible and one of the three synoptic Gospels. It tells the story of who the author believes is Israel's messiah (Christ (title), Christ), Jesus, resurrection of Jesus, his res ...
. It warns against individuals who play a
duplicitous role. The gospel regards such individuals (particularly false teachers) as dangerous.
Fables based on the idiom, dated no earlier than the 12th century
CE, have been falsely credited to ancient Greek storyteller
Aesop
Aesop ( ; , ; c. 620–564 BCE; formerly rendered as Æsop) was a Greeks, Greek wikt:fabulist, fabulist and Oral storytelling, storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as ''Aesop's Fables''. Although his existence re ...
(620–564 BCE). The confusion arises from the similarity of themes in
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 ...
concerning wolves that are mistakenly trusted, with the moral that
human nature
Human nature comprises the fundamental dispositions and characteristics—including ways of Thought, thinking, feeling, and agency (philosophy), acting—that humans are said to have nature (philosophy), naturally. The term is often used to denote ...
eventually shows through any disguise.
In the modern era, zoologists have applied the idiom to the use of
aggressive mimicry
Aggressive mimicry is a form of mimicry in which predation, predators, parasites, or parasitoids share similar signalling theory, signals, using a harmless model, allowing them to avoid being correctly identified by their prey or host (biolog ...
by
predator
Predation is a biological interaction in which one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common List of feeding behaviours, feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation ...
s, whether the disguise is as the prey itself, or as a different but harmless species.
Origin and variants
The phrase originates in the
Sermon on the Mount
The Sermon on the Mount ( anglicized from the Matthean Vulgate Latin section title: ) is a collection of sayings spoken by Jesus of Nazareth found in the Gospel of Matthew (chapters 5, 6, and 7). that emphasizes his moral teachings. It is th ...
by Jesus recorded in the Christian
New Testament
The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...
: "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves". The sermon then suggests that their true nature will be revealed by their actions ("by their fruits shall ye know them", verse 16). In the centuries following, the phrase was used many times in the Latin writings of the
Church Fathers
The Church Fathers, Early Church Fathers, Christian Fathers, or Fathers of the Church were ancient and influential Christian theologians and writers who established the intellectual and doctrinal foundations of Christianity. The historical peri ...
. Later, it was taken up in European vernacular literature. A Latin proverb emerged, (Under a sheep's skin often hides a wolfish mind). The story of a wolf disguised as a sheep has been counted as one of
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 ...
in modern times, but there is no record of a fable with this precise theme before the
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...
; there are earlier fables of Aesop in Greek sources to which the Gospel parable might allude.
The first fable concerning a wolf that disguises itself in a sheep's skin is told by the 12th-century Greek rhetorician Nikephoros Basilakis in his ''
Progymnasmata'' (rhetorical exercises). It is prefaced with the comment that "You can get into trouble by wearing a disguise" and is followed by the illustrative story:
The conclusion drawn is different from the Gospel story. In the former, one is warned to beware of hypocritical evil-doers; Nikephoros warns that evil-doing carries its own penalty.

The next version does not appear until three centuries later in the ''Hecatomythium'' of the 15th-century Italian scholar
Laurentius Abstemius. In his telling,
Certain elements of this story are to be found in Aesop's fable of the shepherd who raised a wolf cub among his dogs. When it was grown, it secretly reverted to type. If a wolf stole a sheep and the dogs could not catch it, the guardian wolf continued the chase and shared the meal with the marauder. On other occasions it would kill a sheep and share the meat with the other dogs. Eventually the shepherd discovered what was happening and hanged the wolf. What may be a reference to this story occurs in an anonymous poem in the
Greek Anthology
The ''Greek Anthology'' () is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the Classical Greece, Classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature. Most of the material of the ''Greek Anthology'' comes from two manuscripts, the ''Palatine ...
in which a goat laments that it is made to suckle a wolf-cub,
The
Perry Index lists three versions of the Greek fable, numbered 234, 267, and 451. Variant 234 concerns a wolf that regularly comes to view the flock, but never attempts any harm. Eventually, the shepherd comes to trust it, and on one occasion leaves the wolf on guard. He returns to find his flock decimated and blames himself for being taken in. In none of the cases does Aesop suggest that the wolf disguised itself as a sheep.
As in the case of
The Walnut Tree, version 267 would not have been the first time that Abstemius adapted one of Aesop's fables to fit a contemporary idiom, in this case that of the wolf in sheep's clothing. Though the commonest retelling of the story in English echoes Abstemius, it is often credited to Aesop.
Yet another variation on the disguise theme was included in the ''Cento favole morali'' ("100 moral fables", 1570) of the Italian poet
Giovanni Maria Verdizotti. In this the wolf dresses itself as a shepherd, but when it tries to imitate his call, it wakes the real shepherd and his dogs. Since the wolf is encumbered by its disguise, it cannot get away and is killed. This is the version followed 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 ...
(III.3). The conclusion both poets draw is the same as Nikephoros's. The story entered the English canon under the title "The wolf turned shepherd" in
Roger L'Estrange's 1692 fable collection and in verse as "The Wolf in Disguise" in Robert Dodsley's 1765 ''Select fables of Esop and other fabulists''.
Artistic interpretations
Earlier illustrations of the fable concentrated on the hanging of the wolf. More recently, the emphasis has been on the disguise. In France, the theme of the wolf disguised in shepherd's clothing is more common and
Gustave Doré
Paul Gustave Louis Christophe Doré ( , , ; 6January 1832 – 23January 1883) was a French printmaker, illustrator, painter, comics artist, caricaturist, and sculptor. He is best known for his prolific output of wood-engravings illustrati ...
's 1868 print of the subject was later reused in the 1977 set of postage stamps from
Burundi
Burundi, officially the Republic of Burundi, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is located in the Great Rift Valley at the junction between the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa, with a population of over 14 million peop ...
featuring this and other fables.
A number of albums are titled ''A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing'', although most are references to the idiom and the fable is not mentioned in the words of any of the songs. The same is true of many songs that have the phrase as their title. One exception is the lyric by
Tackhead on their 1991 CD ''Strange Things'', which uses the fable for a satirical attack on Capitalist entrepreneurs.
Applications
In politics

In politics, the
Fabian Society
The Fabian Society () is a History of the socialist movement in the United Kingdom, British socialist organisation whose purpose is to advance the principles of social democracy and democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist effort in ...
, a British socialist organisation founded in 1884, used a wolf in sheep's clothing in its coat of arms. This was intended to represent "its preferred methodology for achieving its goal." More recently, the term has been used for its negative connotations of appearing harmless but intending consequences that the speaker considers undesirable. For example, in 1967, 'Special Districts' in US administration were so described, with the conclusion that "the proliferation of special districts is not the most desirable means of strengthening responsible local government."
In zoology
Zoologists have repeatedly compared
predator
Predation is a biological interaction in which one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common List of feeding behaviours, feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation ...
y animals which make use of
aggressive mimicry
Aggressive mimicry is a form of mimicry in which predation, predators, parasites, or parasitoids share similar signalling theory, signals, using a harmless model, allowing them to avoid being correctly identified by their prey or host (biolog ...
to a wolf in sheep's clothing.
The idiom has in addition been applied slightly more broadly for aggressive
masquerade, where the predator is disguised as a harmless object, not necessarily the prey.
Predators which have been described using the idiom include
jumping spiders
Jumping spiders are a group of spiders that constitute the family Salticidae. , this family contained over 600 described genera and over 6,000 described species, making it the largest family of spiderscomprising 13% of spider species. Jumping s ...
,
lacewings,
ant-mimicking aphid
Aphids are small sap-sucking insects in the Taxonomic rank, family Aphididae. Common names include greenfly and blackfly, although individuals within a species can vary widely in color. The group includes the fluffy white Eriosomatinae, woolly ...
s,
hemiptera
Hemiptera (; ) is an order of insects, commonly called true bugs, comprising more than 80,000 species within groups such as the cicadas, aphids, planthoppers, leafhoppers, assassin bugs, bed bugs, and shield bugs. They range in size from ...
n bugs mimicking
chrysomelid beetles,
bird-dropping spiders which masquerade as inanimate excreta,
orchid mantises camouflaged as flower parts,
cichlid fish,
and the
zone-tailed hawk which flies with
vulture
A vulture is a bird of prey that scavenges on carrion. There are 23 extant species of vulture (including condors). Old World vultures include 16 living species native to Europe, Africa, and Asia; New World vultures are restricted to Nort ...
s.
These animals have
evolved
Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, re ...
to
deceive their prey by appearing as other prey or harmless objects, or like
angler fish and
snapping turtles
The Chelydridae is a Family (biology), family of turtles that has seven extinct and two extant genera. The extant genera are the snapping turtles, ''Chelydra'' and ''Macrochelys''. Both are Endemic (ecology), endemic to the Western Hemisphere. Th ...
lure the prey by appearing as the prey's prey. The well-attested form of mimicry by predators can be contrasted with defensive mimicry by prey animals against predators, such as
Batesian mimicry
Batesian mimicry is a form of mimicry where a harmless species has evolved to imitate the warning signals of a harmful species directed at a predator of them both. It is named after the English naturalist Henry Walter Bates, who worked on butt ...
.
See also
*
Deception
Deception is the act of convincing of one or many recipients of untrue information. The person creating the deception knows it to be false while the receiver of the information does not. It is often done for personal gain or advantage.
Tort of ...
References
External links
Book illustrations from the 15th–20th centuriesof "The wolf in sheep's clothing"
Book illustrations from the 17th–19th centuriesof "The wolf as shepherd"
{{Sermon on the Mount, state=collapsed
Animal tales
Big Bad Wolf
Canines in religion
English-language idioms
Fables
Fables by Laurentius Abstemius
Wolf who played shepherd, The
Metaphors referring to sheep or goats
Metaphors referring to wolves
Sermon on the Mount
ATU 100-149
Hypocrisy