Lion's Share
Encyclopedia
The lion's share is an idiomatic expression which develops from a number of fables ascribed to Aesop
and is now used as their generic title, although they exist in several different versions. Other fables featuring the same basic situation of an animal dividing up a prey in such a way that it gains the greater part, or even all, exist in the East.
and a sheep go hunting together with a lion. When it comes to dividing the spoil, the lion says, "I take the first portion because of my title, since I am addressed as king; the second portion you will assign to me, since I’m your partner; then because I am the stronger, the third will follow me; and an accident will happen to anyone who touches the fourth".
In the Greek version of Babrius
it is a wild donkey
and a lion
who go hunting. The lion divides their take into three, awarding himself the first because he is king of the beasts, the second because they are 'equal' partners, and suggesting that the ass runs away quickly before daring to touch the third. The moral Babrius draws is, "Measure yourself! Do not engage in any business or partnership with a man more powerful!" These related variants are numbered 339 in the Perry Index
.
Another version that first appears in the Middle Ages is more cynical still. A fox
joins the lion and donkey in hunting. When the donkey divides their catch into three equal portions, the angry lion kills the donkey and eats him. Then the fox put everything into one pile, leaving just a tiny bit for herself, and told the lion to choose. When the lion asked her how she learned to share things this way, the fox replied, "From the donkey’s misfortune." This variation is given a separate number (149) in the Perry Index
and is the one followed by such Renaissance
writers as Gabriele Faerno
, Hieronymus Osius
and Geoffrey Whitney
.
That the number of variations circulating at the time was found puzzling by Mediaeval authors is suggested by the fact that Marie de France
includes two versions in her 12th century Ysopet
. Both appear under the title "The Lion Goes Hunting" (De Leone Venante). On one occasion, she recounts, the lion is joined by officers of his court, a wild ox
and a wolf, who divide the catch into three and invite their lord to apportion it. Then on another occasion, when the lion is accompanied by a goat and a sheep, the deer
they take is divided into four. In both cases the lion begins by claiming portions as a legal right and retains the others with threats. In his later retelling, Jean de la Fontaine
(Fables I.6) has a fourfold division between a heifer
, a goat and a sheep. These the lion retains by right of kingship, because he is the strongest, the bravest, and will kill any who touches the fourth part.
The idiom of 'the lion's share' that derives from these stories has come to mean the larger of two amounts, or else the whole. A Latin reference to the fable is found at the start of the Common Era
, where the phrase societas leonina (a leonine company) was used by one Roman lawyer to describe the kind of unequal business partnership described by Aesop. The early 19th century writer Jefferys Taylor also retold the fable in terms of a commercial enterprise in his poem "The Beasts in Partnership":
poet, Rumi in his Masnavi
. He begins by orienting the reader to interpret the fable in a spiritual sense:
In Rumi's telling, the lion has a wolf and a fox as hunting companions. The lion orders the wolf to divide the catch and when it does so into three parts, tears off the wolf’s head, just as the lion tore the donkey to pieces in Aesop’s fable. Rumi's speciality, however, is always to offer an explanation of his actors' motives. In this case the lion explains that it is an act of grace for him to do so since the wolf did not recognise superiority when he saw it.
When the fox is tested in the same way, he does not even retain a morsel for himself, explaining (as in the Greek version) that he has learned wisdom from the wolf's fate and thanking the lion for giving him the privilege of going second. This allows Rumi to conclude that we are lucky to be living now, with the examples of past generations to guide us. Rumi’s fox then worships at the feet of the lion, addressing him with the words "O king of the world" and is duly rewarded for this devotion with everything that he had resigned to the divine king.
Much the same interpretation was given to this tale by Rumi's English contemporary, Odo of Cheriton
, in the Latin work known as Parabolae. For him too the lion is a symbol of God and his actions are interpreted as an expression of divine justice. Odo explains that the lion punished the wolf, as God did Adam
, for the sin of disobedience. The moral of the story is to learn from this example to show reverence to God, just as the fox learned from the wolf’s punishment. This reading of the fable therefore gained currency in Western Europe too, both via the preachers who used Odo's book as a source of stories for their sermons and through translations of it into French, Spanish and Welsh.
Arabic Encyclopedia
of the Brethren of Purity
tells one such arbitration fable, said there to be of Indian origin. Here a group of foxes are sharing a dead camel. They cannot decide how to divide it among themselves and persuade a passing wolf to make a just division. At first the wolf begins to do this, but on further consideration he decides to keep the rest for himself, as he is, after all, more powerful. (In this case, however, the foxes appeal to the lion who decides in their favour and kills the wolf and returns the camel to them.)
This fable shades into an Indian variant of the story, first told as the Dabbhapuppha Jataka
, which features different animals but has at its centre the same situation of an animal making an unequal division. Here a jackal
offers to arbitrate between two otter
s who are quarrelling over a fish
they have co-operated in bringing to land. The jackal awards them the head and tail and runs off with the bulk of their catch. As well as being a condemnation of the greed that leads to strife, the tale takes a sceptical view of how the powerful frame the law to suit themselves, concluding with the satirical verse,
In that the tale deals with outside arbitration
, however, it has certain points in common with another of Aesop's fables, The Lion, the Bear and the Fox
, in which the first two beasts simultaneously attack a kid and then fight over their spoil. When they are both too exhausted to move, a fox steals their prey and leaves them to reflect, "How much better it would have been to have shared in a friendly spirit."
Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables or the Aesopica are a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and story-teller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE. The fables remain a popular choice for moral education of children today...
and is now used as their generic title, although they exist in several different versions. Other fables featuring the same basic situation of an animal dividing up a prey in such a way that it gains the greater part, or even all, exist in the East.
Aesop
The early Latin version of Phaedrus begins with the reflection that "Partnership with the mighty is never trustworthy". It then relates how a cow, a goatGoat
The domestic goat is a subspecies of goat domesticated from the wild goat of southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the Bovidae family and is closely related to the sheep as both are in the goat-antelope subfamily Caprinae. There are over three hundred distinct breeds of...
and a sheep go hunting together with a lion. When it comes to dividing the spoil, the lion says, "I take the first portion because of my title, since I am addressed as king; the second portion you will assign to me, since I’m your partner; then because I am the stronger, the third will follow me; and an accident will happen to anyone who touches the fourth".
In the Greek version of Babrius
Babrius
Babrius was the author of a collection of fables written in Greek. He collected many of the fables that are known to us today simply as Aesop's fables .Practically nothing is known of him...
it is a wild donkey
Onager
The Onager is a large member of the genus Equus of the family Equidae native to the deserts of Syria, Iran, Pakistan, India, Israel and Tibet...
and a lion
Lion
The lion is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae. With some males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger...
who go hunting. The lion divides their take into three, awarding himself the first because he is king of the beasts, the second because they are 'equal' partners, and suggesting that the ass runs away quickly before daring to touch the third. The moral Babrius draws is, "Measure yourself! Do not engage in any business or partnership with a man more powerful!" These related variants are numbered 339 in the Perry Index
Perry Index
The Perry Index is a widely-used index of "Aesop's Fables" or "Aesopica", the fables credited to Aesop, the story-teller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC...
.
Another version that first appears in the Middle Ages is more cynical still. A fox
Fox
Fox is a common name for many species of omnivorous mammals belonging to the Canidae family. Foxes are small to medium-sized canids , characterized by possessing a long narrow snout, and a bushy tail .Members of about 37 species are referred to as foxes, of which only 12 species actually belong to...
joins the lion and donkey in hunting. When the donkey divides their catch into three equal portions, the angry lion kills the donkey and eats him. Then the fox put everything into one pile, leaving just a tiny bit for herself, and told the lion to choose. When the lion asked her how she learned to share things this way, the fox replied, "From the donkey’s misfortune." This variation is given a separate number (149) in the Perry Index
Perry Index
The Perry Index is a widely-used index of "Aesop's Fables" or "Aesopica", the fables credited to Aesop, the story-teller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC...
and is the one followed by such Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
writers as Gabriele Faerno
Gabriele Faerno
Gabriele Faerno, also known by his Latin name of Faernus Cremonensis, was born in Cremona about 1510 and died in Rome on November 17, 1561. He was a scrupulous scholar and an elegant Latin poet who is best known now for his collection of Aesop's Fables in Latin verse.-Life:Gabriele Faerno was born...
, Hieronymus Osius
Hieronymus Osius
Hieronymus Osius was a German Neo-Latin poet and academic about whom there are few biographical details. He was born about 1530 in Schlotheim and murdered in 1575 in Graz. After studying first at the university of Erfurt, he gained his Masters degree from Wittenberg university in 1552 and later...
and Geoffrey Whitney
Geoffrey Whitney
Geoffrey Whitney was an English poet, now best known for the influence on Elizabethan writing of the Choice of Emblemes that he compiled.-Life:...
.
That the number of variations circulating at the time was found puzzling by Mediaeval authors is suggested by the fact that Marie de France
Marie de France
Marie de France was a medieval poet who was probably born in France and lived in England during the late 12th century. She lived and wrote at an undisclosed court, but was almost certainly at least known about at the royal court of King Henry II of England...
includes two versions in her 12th century Ysopet
Ysopet
Ysopet refers to a medieval collection of fables in French literature, specifically to versions of Aesop's Fables. Alternatively the term Isopet-Avionnet indicates that the fables are drawn from both Aesop and Avianus....
. Both appear under the title "The Lion Goes Hunting" (De Leone Venante). On one occasion, she recounts, the lion is joined by officers of his court, a wild ox
Ox
An ox , also known as a bullock in Australia, New Zealand and India, is a bovine trained as a draft animal. Oxen are commonly castrated adult male cattle; castration makes the animals more tractable...
and a wolf, who divide the catch into three and invite their lord to apportion it. Then on another occasion, when the lion is accompanied by a goat and a sheep, the deer
Deer
Deer are the ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. Species in the Cervidae family include white-tailed deer, elk, moose, red deer, reindeer, fallow deer, roe deer and chital. Male deer of all species and female reindeer grow and shed new antlers each year...
they take is divided into four. In both cases the lion begins by claiming portions as a legal right and retains the others with threats. In his later retelling, Jean de la Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine was the most famous French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his Fables, which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Europe and numerous alternative versions in France, and in French regional...
(Fables I.6) has a fourfold division between a heifer
Heifer
Heifer may refer to:*A young cow before she has had her first calf*Red Heifer, in Judaism is a heifer that is sacrificed and whose ashes are used for the ritual purification*Heifer International, a charitable organization...
, a goat and a sheep. These the lion retains by right of kingship, because he is the strongest, the bravest, and will kill any who touches the fourth part.
The idiom of 'the lion's share' that derives from these stories has come to mean the larger of two amounts, or else the whole. A Latin reference to the fable is found at the start of the Common Era
Common Era
Common Era ,abbreviated as CE, is an alternative designation for the calendar era originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century, traditionally identified with Anno Domini .Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for Before the Common Era Common Era...
, where the phrase societas leonina (a leonine company) was used by one Roman lawyer to describe the kind of unequal business partnership described by Aesop. The early 19th century writer Jefferys Taylor also retold the fable in terms of a commercial enterprise in his poem "The Beasts in Partnership":
-
-
- This firm once existed, I'd have you to know,
- Messrs Lion, Wolf, Tiger, Fox, Leopard & Co;
- These in business were join'd, and of course 'twas implied,
- They their stocks should unite, and the profits divide.
-
Rumi
The alternative version of the fable is given a different reading by the 13th century PersianPersian people
The Persian people are part of the Iranian peoples who speak the modern Persian language and closely akin Iranian dialects and languages. The origin of the ethnic Iranian/Persian peoples are traced to the Ancient Iranian peoples, who were part of the ancient Indo-Iranians and themselves part of...
poet, Rumi in his Masnavi
Masnavi
The Masnavi, Masnavi-I Ma'navi or Mesnevi , also written Mathnawi, Ma'navi, or Mathnavi, is an extensive poem written in Persian by Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi, the celebrated Persian Sufi saint and poet. It is one of the best known and most influential works of both Sufism and Persian literature...
. He begins by orienting the reader to interpret the fable in a spiritual sense:
-
-
-
- "Melt away your existence, as copper in the elixir, in the being of Him who fosters existence.
- You have fastened both your hands tight on 'I' and 'we': all this ruin is caused by dualism."
-
-
In Rumi's telling, the lion has a wolf and a fox as hunting companions. The lion orders the wolf to divide the catch and when it does so into three parts, tears off the wolf’s head, just as the lion tore the donkey to pieces in Aesop’s fable. Rumi's speciality, however, is always to offer an explanation of his actors' motives. In this case the lion explains that it is an act of grace for him to do so since the wolf did not recognise superiority when he saw it.
When the fox is tested in the same way, he does not even retain a morsel for himself, explaining (as in the Greek version) that he has learned wisdom from the wolf's fate and thanking the lion for giving him the privilege of going second. This allows Rumi to conclude that we are lucky to be living now, with the examples of past generations to guide us. Rumi’s fox then worships at the feet of the lion, addressing him with the words "O king of the world" and is duly rewarded for this devotion with everything that he had resigned to the divine king.
Much the same interpretation was given to this tale by Rumi's English contemporary, Odo of Cheriton
Odo of Cheriton
Odo of Cheriton was a Roman Catholic preacher and fabulist.He visited Paris, and it was probably there that he gained the degree of Master...
, in the Latin work known as Parabolae. For him too the lion is a symbol of God and his actions are interpreted as an expression of divine justice. Odo explains that the lion punished the wolf, as God did Adam
Adam
Adam is a figure in the Book of Genesis. According to the creation myth of Abrahamic religions, he is the first human. In the Genesis creation narratives, he was created by Yahweh-Elohim , and the first woman, Eve was formed from his rib...
, for the sin of disobedience. The moral of the story is to learn from this example to show reverence to God, just as the fox learned from the wolf’s punishment. This reading of the fable therefore gained currency in Western Europe too, both via the preachers who used Odo's book as a source of stories for their sermons and through translations of it into French, Spanish and Welsh.
Other related Eastern fables
There is a close family resemblance between fables where the lion takes all because he can and fables where an arbitrator takes advantage of his powerful position, and indeed both are type 51 in the Aarne–Thompson classification system. The 10th century CECommon Era
Common Era ,abbreviated as CE, is an alternative designation for the calendar era originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century, traditionally identified with Anno Domini .Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for Before the Common Era Common Era...
Arabic Encyclopedia
Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity
The Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity was a large encyclopedia in 52 treatises written by the mysterious Brethren of Purity of Basra, Iraq sometime in the second half of the 10th century CE...
of the Brethren of Purity
Brethren of Purity
The Brethren of Purity were a secret society of Muslim philosophers in Basra, Iraq, in the 10th century CE....
tells one such arbitration fable, said there to be of Indian origin. Here a group of foxes are sharing a dead camel. They cannot decide how to divide it among themselves and persuade a passing wolf to make a just division. At first the wolf begins to do this, but on further consideration he decides to keep the rest for himself, as he is, after all, more powerful. (In this case, however, the foxes appeal to the lion who decides in their favour and kills the wolf and returns the camel to them.)
This fable shades into an Indian variant of the story, first told as the Dabbhapuppha Jataka
Jataka
The Jātakas refer to a voluminous body of literature native to India concerning the previous births of the Buddha....
, which features different animals but has at its centre the same situation of an animal making an unequal division. Here a jackal
Jackal
Although the word jackal has been historically used to refer to many small- to medium-sized species of the wolf genus of mammals, Canis, today it most properly and commonly refers to three species: the black-backed jackal and the side-striped jackal of sub-Saharan Africa, and the golden jackal of...
offers to arbitrate between two otter
Otter
The Otters are twelve species of semi-aquatic mammals which feed on fish and shellfish, and also other invertebrates, amphibians, birds and small mammals....
s who are quarrelling over a fish
Fish
Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...
they have co-operated in bringing to land. The jackal awards them the head and tail and runs off with the bulk of their catch. As well as being a condemnation of the greed that leads to strife, the tale takes a sceptical view of how the powerful frame the law to suit themselves, concluding with the satirical verse,
-
-
-
- Just as when strife arises among men,
- They seek an arbiter: he's leader then,
- Their wealth decays and the king's coffers gain.
-
-
In that the tale deals with outside arbitration
Arbitration
Arbitration, a form of alternative dispute resolution , is a legal technique for the resolution of disputes outside the courts, where the parties to a dispute refer it to one or more persons , by whose decision they agree to be bound...
, however, it has certain points in common with another of Aesop's fables, The Lion, the Bear and the Fox
The Lion, the Bear and the Fox
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....
, in which the first two beasts simultaneously attack a kid and then fight over their spoil. When they are both too exhausted to move, a fox steals their prey and leaves them to reflect, "How much better it would have been to have shared in a friendly spirit."