The Belly and the Members is one of Aesop's Fables

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 numbered 130 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...

. It has been various interpreted in different political contexts over the centuries.

The Fable and its applications

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 it 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 monotonously portray an enfeebled man expiring on the ground. 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. Most notably there is a fragmentary Egyptian papyrus going back to the 2nd millennium BCE that belongs to the Near East

Near East

The Near East is a geographical term that covers different countries for geographers, archeologists, and historians, on the one hand, and for political scientists, economists, and journalists, on the other...

ern genre of debate poems; in this case the dispute is between the Belly and the Head. It is thus among the first known examples of the body politic

Body politic

A polity is a state or one of its subordinate civil authorities, such as a province, prefecture, county, municipality, city, or district. It is generally understood to mean a geographic area with a corresponding government. Thomas Hobbes considered bodies politic in this sense in Leviathan...

 metaphor.

The historian Livy

Livy

Titus Livius — known as Livy in English — was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people. Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Chapters from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC...

 recounts the story in the context of a revolt in the 6th century BCE, which a member of the Roman senate

Roman Senate

The Senate of the Roman Republic was a political institution in the ancient Roman Republic, however, it was not an elected body, but one whose members were appointed by the consuls, and later by the censors. After a magistrate served his term in office, it usually was followed with automatic...

 calms by telling the story. It was later repeated in Plutarch

Plutarch

Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

's Life of Coriolanus.

"It once happened," Menenius Agrippa

Menenius Agrippa

Agrippa Menenius Lanatus, sometimes called Menenius Agrippa was a consul of the Roman Republic in 503 BC, with Publius Postumius Tubertus. He conquered the Sabines and was awarded a triumph....

 said, "that all the other members of a man mutinied against the stomach, which they accused as the only idle, uncontributing part the whole body, while the rest were put to hardships and the expense of much labour to supply and minister to its appetites. The stomach, however, merely ridiculed the silliness of the members, who appeared not to be aware that the stomach certainly does receive the general nourishment, but only to return it again, and redistribute it amongst the rest. Such is the case," he said, "ye citizens, between you and the senate. The counsels and plans that are there duly digested, convey and secure to all of you your proper benefit and support."

From this source it was taken by William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

 and dramatised in the opening scene of his play Coriolanus

Coriolanus

Gaius Marcius Coriolanus was a Roman general who is said to have lived in the 5th century BC. He received his toponymic cognomen "Coriolanus" because of his exceptional valor in a Roman siege of the Volscian city of Corioli. He was then promoted to a general...

.

There is also a scriptural

New Testament

The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....

 reference by Paul of Tarsus

Paul of Tarsus

Paul the Apostle , also known as Saul of Tarsus, is described in the Christian New Testament as one of the most influential early Christian missionaries, with the writings ascribed to him by the church forming a considerable portion of the New Testament...

, who was educated in both Hebrew and Hellenic thought, in his first letter to the Corinthians

First Epistle to the Corinthians

The first epistle of Paul the apostle to the Corinthians, often referred to as First Corinthians , is the seventh book of the New Testament of the Bible...

. This represents a shift away from the fable's political application. In the spiritual context of the body of the Church, the fable is used to argue that it 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:

For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary. And those members of the body which we think to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour. (Authorised Version 12.14-23)

In France the fable was to receive a lengthy treatment by 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...

 (III.2). Reversing the order of the historians, he begins 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. This was so too for John Ogilby

John Ogilby

John Ogilby was a Scottish translator, impresario and cartographer. Best known for publishing the first British road atlas, he was also a successful translator, noted for publishing his work in handsome illustrated editions.-Life:Ogilby was born in or near Killemeare in November 1600...

's earlier politicised version of Aesop's fable. The only member on view in Wenceslas Hollar

Wenceslas Hollar

Václav Hollar , known in England as Wenceslaus or Wenceslas and in Germany as Wenzel Hollar , was a Bohemian etcher, who lived in England for much of his life...

's illustration there (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

Charles I of England

Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...

 and the breakdown of government during the subsequent republican period could not be clearer. La Fontaine's English translator, John Matthews

John Matthews (physician)

John Matthews was a versatile English physician and poet, also involved in local affairs and politics in Herefordshire.-Life:Baptised 30 October 1755, he was the only surviving child of William Matthews of Burton, in Linton, Herefordshire, who died 29 August 1799, by his wife Jane, daughter of...

, expands 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

Parliament

A parliament is a legislature, especially in those countries whose system of government is based on the Westminster system modeled after that of the United Kingdom. The name is derived from the French , the action of parler : a parlement is a discussion. The term came to mean a meeting at which...

 of his day without needing to say so outright.

Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist...

 applies 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. A slightly earlier Japanese woodblock print by Kawanabe Kyosai

Kawanabe Kyosai

was a Japanese artist, in the words of a critic, "an individualist and an independent, perhaps the last virtuoso in traditional Japanese painting"....

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.