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The Belly and the Members is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 130 in the Perry Index. It has been interpreted in varying political contexts over the centuries.
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The Belly and the Members is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 130 in the Perry Index. It has been interpreted in varying political contexts over the centuries.
There are several versions of the fable. In early Greek sources it concerns a dispute between the stomach and the feet, or between it and the hands and feet in later Latin versions. These grumble because the stomach gets all of the food, refusing to supply them with nourishment. They see sense when they realise that they are weakening themselves. In Mediaeval versions, the rest of the body becomes so weakened that it dies, and later illustrations almost uniformly portray an enfeebled man expiring on the ground. [1] The present understanding is that the tale's moral supports team effort and recognition of the vital part that all members play in it. In more authoritarian times, however, the fable was taken to affirm direction from the centre.
Research points to early Eastern fables dealing with similar disputes. [2] Most notably there is a fragmentary Egyptian papyrus going back to the 2nd millennium BCE that belongs to the Near Eastern genre of debate poems; in this case the dispute is between the Belly and the Head. [3] It is thus among the first known examples of the body politic metaphor. [4]
There is a scriptural use of the concept of co-operation between the various parts of the body by Paul of Tarsus, who was educated in both Hebrew and Hellenic thought. In his first letter to the Corinthians, he shifts away from the fable's political application and gives it the spiritual context of the body of the Church. The metaphor is used to argue that this body represents a multiplicity of talents co-operating together. While there may still be a hierarchy within it, all are to be equally valued for the part they play:
The Latin historian Livy leads the way in applying the fable to civil unrest. It is recounted by him in the context of the Aventine secession in 495–93 BCE that a member of the Roman Senate convinced the plebeians, who had left Rome in protest at their mistreatment by the patricians, to return by telling the story. In this politicised form, with the patricians playing the part of the stomach, the fable formed an "exemplary paradigm" for the subsequent Roman philosophy of the body politic. [5] [6] The same fable was later repeated in Plutarch's Life of Coriolanus.
From this source it was taken by William Shakespeare and dramatised in the opening scene of his play Coriolanus . [8]
In French sources the story was similarly applied. The late 12th century version by Marie de France concludes with the feudal reflection that 'no one has honour who shames his lord, nor has the sire unless he honours his men'. [9] Near the end of the 14th century, Eustache Deschamps deplored civil war in a ballade titled Comment le chief et les membres doyvent amer l'un l'autre (How the head and members should love one another). [10] This used the fable to argue that the land is weakened when feudal obligations are transgressed. The head should not oppress those under him and in turn should be obeyed. Three centuries later La Fontaine interpreted the fable in terms of the absolute monarchy of his time. Reversing the order of the ancient historians, he starts with the fable, draws a lengthy moral and only then gives the context in which it was first told. For him the royal power is central to and the sustainer of the state. [11]
This was so too for John Ogilby in the context of the troubled history of 17th century England. [12] The only member on view in Wenceslas Hollar's illustration of the fable (see above) is the broken head of a statue damaged by the blind, sword-wielding belly. The reference to the Parliamentary beheading of King Charles I and the breakdown of government during the subsequent republican period could not be clearer. At the start of the 19th century, La Fontaine's English translator, John Matthews, was to expand the fable to even greater length. Beginning with the Roman context, he pictures the social strife in more or less contemporary terms and so hints that the fable supports the power of the aristocratic parliament of his day without needing to say so outright. [13]
Ambrose Bierce applied the fable to labour disputes in his Fantastic Fables (1899). When the workers at a shoe factory go on strike for better conditions, in his satirical rewriting, the owner sets it on fire in order to collect the insurance and so leaves them workless. [14] A slightly earlier Japanese woodblock print by Kawanabe Kyosai in his Isoho Monogotari series (1870–80) had also given the fable a commercial application. Titled "The lazy one in the middle", it shows the seated belly smoking a pipe while the disjointed bodily members crawl on the floor about him. His broad tie is labelled 'Financier' in western lettering to drive home the point. In both these cases the argument of the centre as sustainer is turned around. Far from keeping the members alive, the belly's selfish concerns and greedy demands sap them of energy.
Fable is a literary genre defined as a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or leads to a particular moral lesson, which may at the end be added explicitly as a concise maxim or saying.
Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Of varied and unclear origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to modern times through a number of sources and continue to be reinterpreted in different verbal registers and in popular as well as artistic media.
An apologue or apolog is a brief fable or allegorical story with pointed or exaggerated details, meant to serve as a pleasant vehicle for a moral doctrine or to convey a useful lesson without stating it explicitly. Unlike a fable, the moral is more important than the narrative details. As with the parable, the apologue is a tool of rhetorical argument used to convince or persuade.
Coriolanus is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1605 and 1608. The play is based on the life of the legendary Roman leader Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus. Shakespeare worked on it during the same years he wrote Antony and Cleopatra, making them his last two tragedies.
Agrippa Menenius Lanatus was a consul of the Roman Republic in 503 BC, with Publius Postumius Tubertus. He was victorious over the Sabines and was awarded a triumph which he celebrated on 4 April 503 BC. According to Livy, he also led Roman troops against the Latin town of Pometia. In some traditions he and his colleague also completed a census during their consulship.
The lion's share is an idiomatic expression which now refers to the major share of something. The phrase derives from the plot of a number of fables ascribed to Aesop and is used here as their generic title. There are two main types of story, which exist in several different versions. Other fables exist in the East that feature division of prey in such a way that the divider gains the greater part - or even the whole. In English the phrase used in the sense of nearly all only appeared at the end of the 18th century; the French equivalent, le partage du lion, is recorded from the start of that century, following La Fontaine's version of the fable.
The Monkey and the Cat is best known as a fable adapted by Jean de La Fontaine under the title Le Singe et le Chat that appeared in the second collection of his Fables in 1679 (IX.17). It is the source of popular idioms in both English and French, with the general meaning of being the dupe of another.
The Dog and Its Reflection is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 133 in the Perry Index. The Greek language original was retold in Latin and in this way was spread across Europe, teaching the lesson to be contented with what one has and not to relinquish substance for shadow. There also exist Indian variants of the story. The morals at the end of the fable have provided both English and French with proverbs and the story has been applied to a variety of social situations.
The Farmer and the Viper is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 176 in the Perry Index. It has the moral that kindness to evil will be met by betrayal and is the source of the idiom "to nourish a viper in one's bosom". The fable is not to be confused with The Snake and the Farmer, which looks back to a situation when friendship was possible between the two.
Belling the Cat is a fable also known under the titles The Bell and the Cat and The Mice in Council. In the story, a group of mice agree to attach a bell to a cat's neck to warn of its approach in the future, but they fail to find a volunteer to perform the job. The term has become an idiom describing a group of persons, each agreeing to perform an impossibly difficult task under the misapprehension that someone else will be chosen to run the risks and endure the hardship of actual accomplishment.
The Lion, the Bear and the Fox is one of Aesop's Fables that is numbered 147 in the Perry Index. There are similar story types of both eastern and western origin in which two disputants lose the object of their dispute to a third.
The Wolf and the Lamb is a well-known fable of Aesop and is numbered 155 in the Perry Index. There are several variant stories of tyrannical injustice in which a victim is falsely accused and killed despite a reasonable defence.
The Oak and the Reed is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 70 in the Perry Index. It appears in many versions: in some it is with many reeds that the oak converses and in a late rewritten version it disputes with a willow.
The Hawk and the Nightingale is one of the earliest fables recorded in Greek and there have been many variations on the story since Classical times. The original version is numbered 4 in the Perry Index and the later Aesop version, sometimes going under the title "The Hawk, the Nightingale and the Birdcatcher", is numbered 567. The stories began as a reflection on the arbitrary use of power and eventually shifted to being a lesson in the wise use of resources.
The body politic is a polity—such as a city, realm, or state—considered metaphorically as a physical body. Historically, the sovereign is typically portrayed as the body's head, and the analogy may also be extended to other anatomical parts, as in political readings of Aesop's fable of "The Belly and the Members". The image originates in ancient Greek philosophy, beginning in the 6th century BC, and was later extended in Roman philosophy. Following the high and late medieval revival of the Byzantine Corpus Juris Civilis in Latin Europe, the "body politic" took on a jurisprudential significance by being identified with the legal theory of the corporation, gaining salience in political thought from the 13th century on. In English law the image of the body politic developed into the theory of the king's two bodies and the Crown as corporation sole.
The Dog and the Wolf is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 346 in the Perry Index. It has been popular since antiquity as an object lesson of how freedom should not be exchanged for comfort or financial gain. An alternative fable with the same moral concerning different animals is less well known.
The Fox and the Weasel is a title used to cover a complex of fables in which a number of other animals figure in a story with the same basic situation involving the unfortunate effects of greed. Of Greek origin, it is counted as one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 24 in the Perry Index.
The Ass Carrying an Image is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 182 in the Perry Index. It is directed against human conceit but at one period was also used to illustrate the argument in Canon Law that the sacramental act is not diminished by the priest's unworthiness.
The Frog and the Mouse is one of Aesop's Fables and exists in several versions. It is numbered 384 in the Perry Index. There are also Eastern versions of uncertain origin which are classified as Aarne-Thompson type 278, concerning unnatural relationships. The stories make the point that the treacherous are destroyed by their own actions.
"The Lion Grown Old" is counted among Aesop's Fables and is numbered 481 in the Perry Index. It is used in illustration of the insults given those who have fallen from power and has a similar moral to the fable of The dogs and the lion's skin. Parallel proverbs of similar meaning were later associated with it.
Menenius Agrippa: There was a time when all the body's members Rebell'd against the belly...