The fable

Fable

A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...

 of The Fox and the Sick Lion, attributed to Aesop

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...

, has been well known from Classical times.

The Fable and its Moral

A lion that had grown too old and weak to hunt pretended to be sick as a ruse to make the other animals come and pay their respects. When they did so, he ate them one by one. The fox also came to see him but greeted him from outside the cave. When the lion asked the fox why he didn't come in, he replied, 'Because I can only see the tracks going in, but none coming out.' The moral that Phaedrus draws is that 'The dangers of others are generally of advantage to the wary.' Others comment that 'it is easier to get into the enemy's toils than out again'.

Interestingly, however, the earliest applications of the fable are in an economic context. It is first mentioned, though only in passing, in First Alcibiades

First Alcibiades

The First Alcibiades or Alcibiades I is a dialogue featuring Alcibiades in conversation with Socrates. It is ascribed to Plato, although scholars are divided on the question of its authenticity.- Content :...

, a dialogue often ascribed to Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

, and in any case dated between the 390s BC and 343/2 BC, in which Socrates

Socrates

Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...

 tries to dissuade a young man from following a political career. In describing the Sparta

Sparta

Sparta or Lacedaemon, was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the banks of the River Eurotas in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. It emerged as a political entity around the 10th century BC, when the invading Dorians subjugated the local, non-Dorian population. From c...

n economy, Socrates says:

"and as to gold and silver, there is more of them in Lacedaemon than in all the rest of Hellas, for during many generations gold has been always flowing in to them from the whole Hellenic world, and often from the barbarian also, and never going out, as in the fable of Aesop the fox said to the lion, 'The prints of the feet of those going in are distinct enough;' but who ever saw the trace of money going out of Lacedaemon?"

It is also one of several fables to which the Latin poet Horace

Horace

Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...

 alludes, seeing in it the lesson that once tainted with vice there is no returning. Condemning the get-rich-quick culture of the Roman bankers in his first Epistle, he comments

Now if the people of Rome should happen to ask me

Why I don't share their opinions, just as, in walking,

I share the same collonades; why I don't run after

The things that they love, and flee from what they dislike,

I should answer them in the words of the wary fox

To the sick lion: Because those footprints alarm me,

All pointing towards your den, and none coming back!

(Ep.1.1, lines 69-75)

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...

 gives the fable a different slant by mentioning that, in bidding the animals to visit him, the lion issues them with a safe conduct pass (VI.14). The inference to be drawn is that the word of the powerful is not to be trusted.

There is a similar incident in the Buddhist Nalapana Jataka

Jataka

The Jātakas refer to a voluminous body of literature native to India concerning the previous births of the Buddha....

. In this tale a monkey king saves his troop from destruction by a water-ogre by reconnoitering a jungle pool and reporting that "I found the footprints all lead down, none back."

External links

• 15th-20th century illustrations from books