First, however, let’s review that spectrum of interpretation. In the traditional Greek fable, which I discussed in the first article in this series, the lion is a dangerous and greedy character who takes everything, or almost everything, for himself. The moral is that someone who partners with a lion will end up empty-handed as a result. This anti-authoritarian message is turned upside-down by the Islamic poet Rumi, as I discussed in that first article. For Rumi, the lion is a symbol of God, whose awesome power demands total obedience. The “lion’s share” is not a symbol of injustice or exploitation, but is an allegory of the spiritual gulf dividing the Creator from his creation. The medieval Christian preacher Odo of Cheriton, whom I discussed in the second article in this series, likewise interprets the “lion’s share” as an allegory of God’s divine justice and obedience to authority. This variety of interpretation is a key element in the fables’ longevity, allowing storytellers in different ages and cultures to adapt the stories to their own worlds.

The question of divine and secular authority was central to the 17th-century world of Sir Roger L’Estrange. Born in 1616 during the reign of King James I, L’Estrange took the side of James’s son, King Charles I, in the English Civil War, defending the king’s divine right to rule. The young L’Estrange was sentenced to death in 1644 for his participation in a conspiracy in support of the king, although he was finally pardoned by Oliver Cromwell in 1653. In 1663, following the restoration of the monarchy with the reign of Charles II, L’Estrange became a journalist and eventually a member of Parliament. His massive collection of 500 Aesop’s fables, in which each fable is accompanied by a lengthy “reflection,” was published in 1692, near the close of L’Estrange’s long public career. The choice of subject matter is no surprise. Just as Aesop’s fables had played a part in the turbulent political discourse of ancient Greece and Rome, they were also a regular feature of early modern English politics (Annabel Patterson’s Fables of Power: Aesopian Writing and Political History). While some writers discovered populist morals in the fables, L’Estrange was an ardent monarchist, as Patterson explains:

[L'Estrange] pinned [each fable] down securely with an authoritarian gloss, […] repeating over and overagain the same political doctrine: the subject’s duty of obedience, the fickleness of the mob, the dangers of giving the people the gost of a voice in the way they shall be governed. (141)

The “subject’s duty of obedience” is indeed what we find in L’Estrange’s presentation of the fable of the lion’s share, where the lion embodies an absolute secular authority which must be obeyed at all costs:

There was a Hunting-Match agreed upon betwixt a Lion, an Ass, and a Fox, and they were to go Equal Shares in the Booty. They ran down a Brave Stag, and the Ass was to Divide the Prey; which he did very Honestly and Innocently into Three Equal Parts, and left the Lion to take his Choice: Who never Minded the Divident; but in a Rage Worry’d the Ass, and then bad the Fox Divide; who had the Wit to make Only One Share of the Whole, saving a Miserable Pittance that he Reserv’d for Himself. The Lion highly approv’d of his Way of Distribution; but Prethee Reynard, says he, who thee to Carve? Why truly says the Fox, I had an Ass to my Master; and it was His Folly made me Wise.
THE MORAL. There must be no Shares in Sovereignty.

For L’Estrange, this lion is a symbol of the sovereign monarch, and there must be “no Shares in Sovereignty” – in other words, the exorbitant share of the lion king is exactly what the lion deserves.  Yet as L’Estrange himself admits in the reflection added to the moral, “This Fable is diffidently Moralliz’d Elsewhere.” This “elsewhere” includes L’Estrange’s own collection of fables, where he tells the story of the lion’s share a second time, and with a quite different slant. This other version does not endorse the absolute authority of the lion king, but  instead provides a cautionary moral, which warns you to beware of men more powerful than yourself:

A Lion, an Ass, and some other of their Fellow-Foresters, went a hunting one day; and every one to go share and share-like in what they took. They pluck’d down a Stag, and cut him into so many Parts; but as they were entring upon the dividend, Hands off, says the Lion, This Part is mine by the Privilege of my Quality; this, because I’ll have it in spite of your teeth; this again, because I took most pains for’t; and if you dispute the fourth, we must e’en pluck a Crow about it. So the Confederates Mouths were all stopt, and they went away as mute as Fishes.
THE MORAL. There’s no entring into Leagues or Partnerships with those that are either too powerful, or too crafty for us. He that has the Staff in his Hand will be his own Carver.

In this version of the story, L’Estrange does not insist that authority should be obeyed, but instead that it should be avoided. Instead of interpreting the lion as an emblem of royal sovereignity, this time L’Estrange characterizes this lion as “too powerful” and “too crafty,” a “carver” rather than a king. Notice, too, that the plot is slightly different. Instead of the Greek version of the story which features the witty repartee of the lion and the fox, this version, derived from the Roman poet Phaedrus, keeps the lion’s companions in total silence. Confronted by the brute force of the lion’s power, the other animals can say nothing at all. It’s still a story of the “lion’s share,” but this time the lion’s share is a symbol of coercion and exploitation,  and no longer the divine right of kings.

Working with these different versions of the fables, L’Estrange embraced the task of moralizing the stories for his own political purposes, just as the politicians of ancient Greece and Rome had done in their time. Yet if you want to find L’Estrange’s wonderful book of fables in a bookstore today, you will have no luck in the History or Politics section. Instead, you must go to the Children’s section, which is where Aesop’s fables have been consigned in our own day and time. Enshrined in the Everyman’s Library of Children’s Classics published by Knopf, you will indeed find a modern edition of L’Estrange’s fables, beautifully illustrated, and with his explosive 17th-century prose intact.  It’s my favorite of all the English translations of Aesop’s fables, but surely not 21st-century children’s fare.

Meanwhile, keep your ears open for the next time you hear someone use the phrase “the lion’s share.” It’s still a very common English phrase, although most people no longer know the fable that it comes from. Consider the context in which the phrase is used, and ask yourself which side of the spectrum it has landed. Is “the lion’s share” being used to symbolize something natural and right, the large proportion necessarily due to someone who is the king of the beasts…? Or is it instead something unfair and exorbitant, the share that is wrongly taken by force…? You might even engage in a bit of fable revival, and tell your own version of the story about what happened when the lion went hunting in partnership with the other beasts.

Works Cited

• Patterson, Annabel. Fables of Power: Aesopian Writing and Political History. 1991.
• L’Estrange, Sir Roger. Fables of Aesop, and Other Eminent Mythologists, with Morals and Reflexions. 1692. (The full text of the 1738 edition of the book is available online at Google Books.)

Unlike other genres of ancient literature, Aesop’s fables were easy to assimilate into the European Christian tradition because of their resemblance to the parables of Jesus recorded in the Gospels. Like the parables of Jesus, Aesop’s fables are short, simple stories that teach a moral lesson. Moreover, the adventures of Aesop’s talking animals provided some welcome humor, being filled with comic elements that are lacking in the parables of Jesus. As they rewrote the fables, the Christian monks would freely elaborate on the morals of the stories, adding in Bible verses in order to bring the fables more fully into the Christian tradition. Sometimes they would allegorize the fables, looking for Christian symbols, such as the treacherous serpent or the peaceful dove. They sometimes supplemented the traditional fables of Aesop inherited from ancient Greece and Rome with similar animal fables, drawing on local storytelling traditions, or making up stories of their own. These fable books were used as reference materials for preachers as they crafted their sermons, much as in the ancient Greek world the first collections of Aesop’s fables had been created as a reference work for orators looking for anecdotes to use in a speech.

One of the most famous of these medieval fable collections was written by Odo of Cheriton, a 13th-century English preacher and scholar. Odo’s Latin fables were well-known and circulated widely, as evidenced by numerous manuscript copies as well as translations into Spanish, French, and Welsh. Odo was a very learned man for his time, having studied in the schools of Paris, but he was not a high-brow scholar. Instead, he intended for his writings to appeal to a general audience, embracing both the clergy and lay people. Many of the fables evince a strong sympathy for the poor and oppressed, with often sharp criticisms of high-ranking church officials. At the same time, Odo also looked for theological messages in the fables, interpreting the stories of the animals as a symbolic code for the workings of God in the world. Odo’s fables thus provide evidence of both the “humanistic” and “religious” types of storytelling which Randy introduced in an article from a previous issue, God And Man: Two Themes.

For an example of Odo’s humanistic social satire, let’s look at the little story of the rat, the cheese and the cat. The story is a simple one: There was a certain man who had some cheese in his pantry, and a rat came and gnawed on the cheese. The man decided that the best thing to do would be to get a cat to guard the cheese — but the results were not what the man expected: the cat ate the rat, and then ate up all the cheese, too. In the moral to the story, Odo explains:

So likewise many bishops put a parish into the hands of a chaplain who devours the parish. Finally the bishop puts an archdeacon in charge, and the archdeacon devours both the chaplain and the parish, just like the rat and the cheese.

Odo thus uses the story of the greedy cat to criticize the greedy church officials of his time.

Odo is also one of our earliest recorded sources for the story of belling the cat, and this story, too, he turns into a criticism of corrupt church officials. Here is the story: the mice held a council to decide how to protect themselves from the cat. A wise mouse said that they should tie a bell around the cat’s neck so that they could hear when he was coming. All the mice like this idea, and then one of the mice said asked who was going to tie the bell around the cat’s neck, whereupon each of the mice squeaked, “Not me! Not me!” Here is the moral that Odo gives to the story:

So it often happens when preachers and monks rise up against a bishop or a prior or an abbot, saying, “If only so-and-so could be removed so that we could have another bishop or abbot.” Everybody likes the idea, but finally they ask: “Who will stand up against the bishop? Who will accuse him?” Everybody is afraid and says, “Not me! Not me!” So in this way the less powerful people allow the more powerful people to exist and dominate them.

In this story, Odo again interprets the predatory cat in terms of a powerful church official, with the mice being too timid to defend themselves.

Yet while Odo is not afraid to criticize the authority of the church, his humanistic impulses extend only so far. When it comes to the question of God himself and obedience to divine authority, Odo was no rebel. We can see this very clearly in the way that he interprets the fable of the lion’s share. In this story, a lion goes hunting with a fox and a wolf as partners. The lion catches a fat ram, the wolf a skinny cow, and the fox a goose. The lion tells the wolf to divide the spoils. The wolf says each animal should take what he caught, whereupon the lion flays the wolf’s head, leaving it bloody. Then the lion tells the fox to divide things up. The fox tells the lion to take the fat ram and the goose because they are good to eat; he tells the lion to leave the skinny cow for the lion’s followers, since it is not very good to eat to begin with. The lion praises the fox and asks how she learned to do division so well. The fox replies: “The red cap of my colleague taught me, his flayed head providing the lesson.”

When Odo interprets this story, the predatory lion is not seem as the emblem of a dangerous and greedy church official. Instead, this lion is a symbol of God, and his actions are interpreted as a perfect expression of divine justice. Odo explains that the lion punished the wolf just as God punished Adam for the sin of disobedience. The moral of the story is to learn from Adam’s punishment to show reverence to God, just as the fox reverenced the lion after seeing the wolf’s punishment.

Odo’s approval of the lion’s actions as an emblem of divine authority is something quite different from what we find in traditional interpretations of the fable of the lion’s share. The usual moral of the story is that the lion is a very greedy and dangerous beast; the best solution is simply not to make a partnership with the lion to begin with! If an animal is foolish enough to become partners with a lion, that animal should be prepared to pay the consequences. Leonina societa periculorum plena, as the old Latin saying reminds us: Keeping company with a lion is full of danger. For Odo, however, the lion is not just another animal; the lion is a symbol of God, and as such his authority is to be obeyed without question. (The Islamic poet Rumi took exactly the same approach to the fable of the lion’s share, interpreting it as a lesson in religions obedience; I have discussed this in a previous article, Rumi: The Fable of the Lion’s Share.)

As you can see from the range of Odo’s interpretations of the fables, there are no objective or absolute rules for interpreting a given fable. Sometimes a predatory animal is a symbol of a greedy bishop or deacon, as in the story of the cat, the rat, and the cheese, or in the story of belling the cat, prompting a humanistic message that defies false claims to divine authority. Yet a predatory animal can also be a symbol of divine authority which must be obeyed without question, as in the story of the lion’s share. Even if the ancient Romans did not interpret the lion’s share as a story of divine authority, there is nothing to stop Odo from taking that approach to the story, fitting the story firmly into a Christian framework. The adaptability of the fable genre allows Odo to use the old fables to express a wide range of meanings, from social satire to theology, with morals that suit his life and time.

References

• Hervieux, Léopold. Les fabulistes latins. Vol. IV: Études de Cheriton et ses dérivés. Paris: 1896. (Online at GoogleBooks; the Latin texts of the fables are also available at the Aesopus Wiki.)

From the start, Aesop is presented as a kind of anti-philosopher, the opposite of the Greek philosophical idea. The name itself, Aesop, means “burnt-face,” in contrast to the the name of the philosopher Xanthus, which means “yellow, blond.” Here is how the first sentence of the novel describes our hero: “Aesop was of loathsome aspect, worthless as a servant, potbellied, misshapen of head, snub-nosed, swarthy, dwarfish, bandy-legged, short-armed, squint-eyed, liver-lipped — a portentous monstrosity.” Worst of all, Aesop was  “voiceless,” unable to speak.  Aesop is like an animal, ἄλογον ζῷον (alogon zoion) in Greek philosophical terminology, a “living thing without logos,” a brute beast, a dumb animal. Later on, Aesop will gain the power of speech, but as the novel begins, Aesop is mute.

Seeing his unfortunate condition, Aesop’s fellow slaves decide to take advantage of him. In one incident, some slaves eat the master’s figs, and try to blame Aesop for it. Although he cannot speak, Aesop nevertheless finds a way to prove his innocence. He calls for a basin of warm water, drinks it down, and then makes himself vomit, showing he had had nothing to eat. His master then commands the slaves who accused Aesop of eating the figs to do the same, and all the figs came forth, as you can see here:

Aesop and the Figs, by Francis Barlow.
Life of Aesop, 1687. More information »

Even though Aesop is mute, he can tell a story without words, mounting a logical defense of his innocence: Figs, when eaten, go to the stomach; Aesop’s stomach contains no figs; ergo, Aesop did not eat the figs!

When Aesop later does get the gift of speech (a divine reward for kindness that he shows to a priestess of Isis), his master decides to get rid of him, fearing trouble. Aesop is then purchased by the philosopher Xanthus, an extremely pretentious know-it-all who is the perfect target for Aesop’s wit.

One day, for example, when Xanthus and Aesop are out walking together, a gardener asks Xanthus just why it is that no matter how careful he is when he plants his crops, the weeds always grow up faster and stronger and overwhelm his fruits and vegetables. Xanthus is baffled by the paradox and can only reply that Divine Providence governs all things. When he hears this useless answer, Aesop bursts out laughing. Xanthus is insulted, and challenges Aesop to provide a better explanation.

Aesop does so, supplying his answer in the form of a story. The gardener’s situation, explains Aesop, is like a woman who has children from a first marriage who gets married again, and her second husband has children by a former wife. She is the mother to her own children, lavishing attention on them and helping them to thrive, while she is the stepmother to her husband’s children, shortchanging them on their food and caring nothing for their survival. This is just what Mother Earth does to the gardener’s crops. She is the mother to the weeds, but only the stepmother to the crops which the gardener has burdened her with. The gardener finds this explanation deeply satisfying. He praises Aesop, thanks him for having alleviated his concerns, and offers him a basket of vegetables as his reward — which is more than he had offered to Xanthus, the philosopher!

Aesop and the Gardener, by Francis Barlow.
Life of Aesop, 1687. More information »

What Aesop has given the gardener is not a scientific explanation of how weeds survive and flourish, and Aesop’s answer does not really help the gardener to find a way to increase his harvest. Yet there is nevertheless something that the gardener finds satisfying in Aesop’s analogy. Analogies are an important part of how mythical thinking seeks to explain the world, and while the analogy does not here help the gardener to change his situation, it does help him to understand it. What Aesop has given the gardener is a form of wisdom. It is not science in the modern sense of the word, and it is not even knowledge, in a basic factual sense of knowing the world. Aesop’s story does, however, allow the gardener to look at his life and experience it as meaningful, as opposed to the sense of inexplicable randomness which had troubled him previously.

At the same time that Aesop is able to find meaning where the philosopher fails to do so, he does not fall into the trap of supposing that he has any real knowledge of his own. Consider, for example, what happens when his master sends him to inspect the baths. While Aesop is on his way there, he runs into a government official, who asks Aesop where he is going. Aesop says simply, “I don’t know.” This infuriates the official, who insists on knowing where Aeosp is going. Aesop still refuses to answer the question, saying only, “I don’t know.” The official, completely enraged, orders that Aesop be arrested and taken to jail. At this point, Aesop explains: “You see that my answer was correct; I did not know that I was going to jail!” The government official is so startled by Aesop’s display of wisdom that he lets him go.

Aesop and the Baths, by Francis Barlow.
Life of Aesop, 1687. More information »

In this incident, Aesop is to all outward appearances a fool. He seems to be stupid and unintelligent, in addition to being rude and obstinate. Yet it turns out that his words contained a truth that eluded his interrogator, and it is a truth that perhaps we can all learn from. For all our plans and purposes, do we really know where we are going…? While Aesop refuses to accept “Divine Providence” as an explanation for why the weeds grow, he also does not make a godlike idol of human knowledge, making the mistake that many philosophers do, of assuming that we can aspire to perfect knowledge. There is a famous motto of the Greek philosophers, attributed variously to Socrates, Pythagoras, and Thales (among others): “Know thyself.” Aesop, however, cackles a different motto of knowledge: “I don’t know!”

With his provocative wit, Aesop is not a philosopher in the traditional sense of the word, but is instead one of the world’s great “wise fools,” someone whose jokes and pranks are also instruments of wisdom. He has kin in many countries, such as the Middle Eastern jokester Nasruddin so beloved of the Sufis, or the cinematic “Little Tramp” of Charlie Chaplin who was also able to speak without words. Like a court jester, Aesop is always lurking in the halls of seriousness and self-importance, ready to provide not just comic relief but surprising insight into the ways of the world as well.

Works Consulted

• Daly, Lloyd W., translator. “The Aesop Romance.” Anthology of Greek Popular Literature. William Hansen, editor. Indiana University Press, Bloomington: 1998.
• Ferrari, Franco, editor. Romanzo di Esopo. Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, Milan: 1998.

A typical fable usually has a two-part plot sequence: the confrontation, and the outcome. Unlike modern comic book art, where a plot sequence can be shown in a series of panels, in these illustrations the artist uses only one panel to depict the plot. In that one panel, the artist may depict the confrontation, or the outcome, or both, as you can see in the examples below. In each case, however, the reader must still apply additional information in order to get a mental picture of the whole story. That additional information might come from the text, or it might come from the storytelling tradition itself, since many of these fables were well established in European folklore and well known in the oral tradition long before being printed in books.

In the famous story of the wolf and the lamb, for example, the wolf accuses the lamb of muddying the water, while the lamb protests that he is innocent; this is the confrontation. The wolf eats the lamb anyway; this is the outcome. The artist has chosen to render the confrontation scene, including the important detail that the lamb is drinking downstream from the wolf. Any reader who knows the fable already can supply the outcome based on what they see here.

From Steinhowel’s Aesop, 1479. View larger image »

For an illustration which shows the outcome instead, consider the frog and the mouse. The frog offered to help the mouse cross the stream, and the mouse tied itself to the frog so that it would not drown. The treacherous frog then plunges under the water, trying to drown the mouse; this is the confrontation. In the outcome, a passing kite swoops down and carries away both the mouse and the frog. For readers who know the story, the confrontation is can be easily deduced from the dramatic denouement.

From Steinhowel’s Aesop, 1479. View larger image »

Sometimes the artist shows a series of events occupying the same space even if they unfold separately in time. Consider, for example, the story of the old lion: he is attacked first by a boar, then by a bull, and finally by a donkey, which is the most humiliating of all. The illustration shows all three attacks as if they were simultaneous, but readers who know the story realize that the attacks happen in a sequence, culminating with the despicable donkey.

From Steinhowel’s Aesop, 1479. View larger image »

Meanwhile, to understand the meaning of the fire coming out of the boar’s mouth, you need a knowledge of the  Latin text of the story, which explains that the boar had dentes fulminei, “teeth that flash like lightning.” With this detail, the Latin text exerted a specific, direct influence on the illustration; later on, we will see an example of an image which instead challenges the text.

But first, let’s look at another example of multiple scenes in a single panel, the story of the lion and the mouse. A lion caught a mouse, and the mouse begged for mercy, promising he would do the lion a favor in the future. The lion scoffed, but let the mouse go. This is the mouse in the lower right, pinned under the lion’s paws. Later, the lion was caught in a snare and the mouse then chewed through the ropes, setting the lion free. This is the mouse in the upper right, chewing through the rope wrapped around the lion’s neck. Without the text of the story, you might think there are two mice, but there is really only one. In addition, you might think the lion is caught in a snare when he traps the mouse, but not so: you are seeing two different moments of time, superimposed.

From Steinhowel’s Aesop, 1479. View larger image »

You can even find sequences of three scenes combined into a single panel, as in the story of Zeus and the frogs. As the story begins, the frogs ask Zeus to give them a king, so he hurls a log down into the water; you can see Zeus hurling the log on the left. At first the frogs are impressed by the big splash made by the log, but they grow bored with their king, and hop on the log to show their contempt. You can see the frogs hopping on the log in the lower right. They then ask Zeus to send them another king, so he does: you can see the bird (a stork? a crane? a heron?) in the upper right, as he eats his subjects one by one.

From Steinhowel’s Aesop, 1479. View larger image »

But where did this bird come from? The text accompanying the image says it was a water snake, not a water bird, who devoured the foolish frogs. All the classical and medieval Latin texts are clear on this: Zeus sent a snake to devour the frogs. Did the artist know a different version of the story? Or did he simply prefer the bird for artistic reasons of his own? Whatever its origin, the bird in the illustration to Steinhowel’s Aesop in 1479 became firmly established in the tradition of Aesop illustrations, as you can see here in Hieronymus Osius’s verse fables published in 1574. The illustration features a bird, even though the Latin text still maintains that it was a snake which ate the frogs.

From Osius’s Phryx Aesopus, 1574. View larger image »

Over time, the bird not only inhabited the illustrations of the fables, but also started to appear in the texts as well, both in Latin and in the other European languages. Let’s leap forward in time several hundred years, to the lovely Baby’s Own Aesop of 1887, illustrated by Walter Crane; by this time, the water snake was long forgotten and Walter Crane did not even realize that “King Stork” was a late medieval interloper in the history of this fable. The image, the text and even the title of the fable now all refer clearly to a stork, with no trace of the snake to be found.

From Walter Crane’s Baby’s Own Aesop, 1887. View larger image »

As folklore, Aesop’s fables are always shifting and changing in their various retellings, and the images used to illustrate the fables, just as much as the words, are part of that creative tradition. The images are not simply extras added on to the story. Instead, these images can contribute their own distinctive elements to that endless mix-and-match process by which new versions of the fables are created — a process which has kept the Aesop’s fable tradition going strong for three thousands years, and counting.

Works Discussed

• Steinhowel, Heinrich. Aesopus: Vita et Fabulae. 1479. (Illustrations available online at Aesopica.net.)
• Osius, Hieronymus. Phryx Aesopus Habitu Poetico. 1574. (Available online at Aesopica.net.)
• Linton, W.J. The Baby’s Own Aesop. 1887. Illustrations by Walter Crane. (Available online at Aesopica.net.)

Let’s begin with the version of the anecdote told about Aesop himself, as found in the Roman poet Phaedrus:

Once when Aesop happened to be the only slave in his master’s household, he was ordered to prepare dinner earlier than usual. He thus had to visit a few houses looking for fire, until at last he found a place where he could light his lamp. Since his search had taken him out of his way along a winding path, he decided to shorten his journey on the way back and go straight through the forum. There amidst the crowds a talkative fellow shouted at him, “Aesop, what’s with the lamp in the middle of the day?” “I’m just looking to see if I can find a real man,” said Aesop, as he quickly made his way back home.

Phaedrus’s story gives a practical reason why Aesop was carrying a lighted lamp during the daytime: the fire had gone out at his house, and he needed to relight it. The person in the forum, however, thinks that Aesop is being a fool, carrying around a lamp when it is perfectly light outside. Aesop, however, manages to make the man look like a fool: it may be broad daylight, but men worthy of the name are so hard to find that he needs a lamp to look for them.

This story about Aesop as a “wise fool” is based on an even older story about the Cynic philosopher Diogenes, who rejected human society, lived inside a tub, and ate nothing but onions. The oldest version of the story consists of a single sentence: “Having lighted a candle in the day time, Diogenes said, ‘I am looking for a man.’” Unlike Aesop, Diogenes plays the fool on purpose. The Cynic philosopher carries the lamp around in broad daylight precisely in order to provoke people, so that he can then turn around and insult them. This public performance in which the audience itself becomes the butt of the joke thus encapsulates the provocativeness of Cynic philosophy itself.

Over time, however, this anecdote has lost all its sharp edges. In preparing this article, I asked ten people if they knew the story about the philosopher and his lamp. To my amazement, every single person knew the story! Yet when I asked about the meaning of the story, each person told me that the man with the lamp was looking for “an honest man” and he needed the lamp because honesty is so hard to find in the world. This modern version of the story still expresses a social critique, but the philosopher is no longer a “wise fool” and he no longer insults his audience.

Part of the problem, of course, is that we just don’t think much about lamps these days! Take the popular saying “to burn daylight.” Nowadays the phrase means “to waste time,” as if the limited number of hours in the day were fuel in a gas tank about to run dry. Originally, however, “to burn daylight” meant to act foolishly, as Diogenes and Aesop did, by burning precious lamp oil when there was no need to do so, “burning (a lamp during) daylight.” No less a writer than Shakespeare shows us that this was the original meaning of the phrase: “Come, we burn daylight, ho! […] We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day”  (Romeo and Juliet). Both Diogenes and Aesop were foolishly “burning daylight” when they carried their lighted lamps into the marketplace, but in the end they proved themselves to be “wise fools” after all, getting the last laugh by insulting their detractors.

When we turn to this story in Rumi’s Mathnawi, however, the man with the lamp does not get the last laugh. Instead, Rumi provides the story with an entirely new message of divine transcendence which is unprecedented in the Greco-Roman tradition. The story begins straightforwardly enough:

A person was going about in a bazaar in the daytime with a candle, his heart full of love and ardor. A busybody said to him, “Hey, what are you seeking beside every shop? Hey, why are you going about in search of something with a lamp in bright daylight? What is the joke?” He replied, “I am searching everywhere for a man who is alive with the life inspired by that Divine Breath. Is there a man in existence?”

As Rumi proceeds, however, the busybody in the marketplace turns out not the butt of the joke after all. Instead, he turns out to be the true sage, preaching a Sufi sermon to the man with the lamp:

“Consider well! You regard the branch; you are unaware of the root: we are the branch, the ordinances of the Divine decree are the root. […] Since thou hast seen the revolution of the millstone, come now, see also the water of the river. Thou hast seen the dust rise into the air: amidst the dust see the wind. Thou seest the kettles of thought boiling: look with intelligence on the fire, too.”

For Rumi, to insult the world for its failings, as Aesop and Diogenes do, is no real accomplishment. To look upon the reality of this world is to see only the branch but not the root, which is God; to see the millstone of the world’s daily activities is to miss the motion of the river, which is God; to see the dust of our daily confusion swirling about us is to miss the wind, which is God. Finally, to focus only on the boiling kettles of human thought is to overlook the essential fire, which is God.

To invoke the humanistic and religious themes which Randy has used as a schema for examining mythological storytelling, we can see that once again in this little story of the philosopher and his lamp that there is a humanistic approach one can take, or a religious one. In the humanistic approach, the philosopher is an agent of social criticism, launching a sharply pointed barb at the self-satisfied bluster of human society, where the question of God simply does not arise. In the religious interpretation, however, the question of God is used to trump the social criticism, obviating it entirely in order to take the light-bearer down a new and unseen path. When Rumi appropriated the Aesop’s fable about “the lion’s share,” he turned the fox’s sharp social critique of the lion into an acknowledgment of the transcendent power of God. We see the same process at work here in Rumi’s use of the story of the philosopher’s lamp, where God is the fire that lights the mind of the philosopher, a flame far greater than any earthly lamp.

References

• Gibbs, Laura. Aesop’s Fables. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. (Full text of this fable is available online.)
• Nicholson, Reynold A. (editor and translator). The Mathnawi of Jalaluddin Rumi. 1926 (reprinted 1990); The Mathnawi of Jalaluddin Rumi: Commentary. 1937 (reprinted 1985).

1. “Religious”: Man must submit to God as the absolute authority. God is good, and His actions are beyond human scrutiny.
2. “Humanistic”: Man should judge whether God’s actions are good or wicked. If man determines that God is wicked, he should rebel against him.

I have previously looked at two myths involving characters disobeying divine commands: Satan in Paradise Lost and Iblis in the Qur’an. For each of these stories, we have seen two main lines of interpretation — one approving the disobedient character’s actions and one disapproving them — and explored how these interpretations reflect those two themes. I will now conclude this series by looking at another such story of disobedience, the Aesopic fable of Zeus and the turtle.

This fable exists in many different versions spanning hundreds of years, but the basic plot in each is the same. Zeus invites the animals to his wedding. All the animals attend except the turtle, who either skips the wedding altogether or shows up incredibly late. When Zeus later asks the turtle why she did not attend, she replies with some proverbial expression similar to the English, “There’s no place like home.” Zeus gets angry at the turtle and makes her carry her home with her wherever she goes. This type of fable is called “aetiological” (from Greek aition, “cause”) because it explains the origin or cause of something — in this case, how the turtle got her shell.

Aesopic fables have not received the same volume of literary criticism or commentary as Paradise Lost and the Qur’an. To find interpretations of this fable, I will look at a variety of sources: the morals attached to different versions of the fable, an essay from the seventeenth century, and recent work in Aesopic scholarship.

The oldest written version of the fable exists in a collection most likely dating from the second or third century CE. The author of this collection interprets the fable in a single-sentence moral following the story:

The fable shows that people often prefer to live simply at home than to live lavishly at someone else’s house. (Gibbs 235)

In this interpretation, the turtle is not criticized for judging the divine command and then choosing to disobey it. The moral does not explicitly praise the turtle’s actions, but the lack of criticism reflects in part what I am calling the “humanistic theme.” The turtle confined to her shell could be seen as somewhat analogous to Prometheus unjustly chained to the rocky crags, whom I mentioned in the first article in this series.

This interpretation appears in the oldest written version of the fable, but Aesopic fables existed in oral form for at least five hundred years before this. The aetiological fables originally worked like folktales to explain the world, and morals were most likely attached to them at a later time (Rodríguez Adrados 162). The Latin grammarian Servius, writing near the end of the fourth century CE, tells a version of the fable without a moral. (This comes in his grammatical commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid , referring to line I.505 that contains a form of the word testudo, Latin for “turtle.”) In this version, the turtle begins as a nymph named Khelônê (Greek for “turtle”). She says nothing about the value of her own house but simply mocks the wedding from afar. When Mercury (Jupiter’s wedding coordinator in this version) discovers her absence, he punishes her by turning her into an animal and throwing her house on top of her.

An important difference between this fable and the stories of Satan and Iblis is the lack of a religious context. Zeus’s invitation is not exactly a command, it relates to a social function and not to any form of worship, and the turtle’s punishment does not seem to be a spiritual one. Many interpreters allegorize Aesopic fables with gods to place them in a more secular context. Ancient Greek society was governed by relationships of reciprocity, and some interpreters in antiquity would most likely have understood this fable as a criticism of the turtle for neglecting her social responsibilities (Zafiropoulos 105). Though it does not appear in any surviving ancient texts, this interpretation does appear in a version published in 1604 by Candidus Pantaleon. The turtle arrives at the wedding late, espousing her proverbial expression to Jupiter there. Pantaleon criticizes the turtle on three points in his moral:

[1] There are some who are accustomed to have practically preferred paltry things to the great splendors of palaces. [2] You should be afraid to provoke nobles by delaying. […] [3] You should be quick to placate your wrong actions with speech. (105)

Though these interpretations can hardly be said to reflect the religious theme in full — Zeus is not portrayed as transcendent good beyond all human scrutiny — they do reflect it in part. The turtle has an obligation to respect and obey Zeus; she is criticized for disobeying his command and for doing what she incorrectly thought was right.

Sir Roger L’Estrange collected and translated a large number of fables into English in 1692, attaching to each fable a short essay inspired by it. In the fable of Zeus and the turtle, he recognizes both interpretations:

We are to learn from hence (says the old Moral) that [1] there’s no trifling, dallying, or delaying with Men in Power: And that [2] Contentment in a mean Condition at Home, is beyond all the luxurious Treats in the World. (198)

L’Estrange prefers the second interpretation, and his essay proceeds to praise the turtle for his sensibility and common sense and to criticize the vanity, pomp, over-indulgence, and wickedness represented by Jupiter and his palace. L’Estrange’s interpretation reflects fully what I have been calling the “humanistic theme,” in which the disobedient character is praised for scrutinizing and disobeying the divine command. Ironically, however, L’Estrange concludes his essay by placing this interpretation in a religious context by introducing Providence over and above Jupiter:

What was the Punishment? [Jupiter] sent [the Tortoise] Home again. That is to say, [Jupiter] remanded [the Tortoise] to […] his [own] Choice. […] Providence turns the very Punishment of a good Man, into an Equivalence to a Reward, by improving that to his Advantage, which was intended for his Ruin. (199)

These two themes summarize well the range of insights found in Western myths concerning man’s relationship to the divine. These myths of disobedience against a divine command, along with their contrary interpretations, demonstrate the importance of these two themes in the Western tradition. Furthermore, these differing interpretations should caution us against presuming that individual myths have “meanings” in any absolute sense. Even stories like Paradise Lost that appear to be overtly religious can inspire in readers a secular or humanistic sentiment. We should not dismiss any of these interpretations as “incorrect” but should seek instead to understand the personal, cultural, and universal human factors that have led to these various interpretations.

References

• Gibbs, Laura. Aesop’s Fables. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
• Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco. A History of the Graeco-Latin Fable. Trans. Leslie A. Ray. New York: Brill, 1999.
• Maurus Servius Honoratus. Commentary on the Aeneid of Vergil. (Latin text available online.)
• Zafiropoulos, Christos A. Ethics in Aesop’s Fables: The Augustana Collection. New York: Brill, 2001.
• Candidus Pantaleon. Centum et Quinquaginta Fabulae. 1604. Unpublished translation by Laura Gibbs. (Latin text available online.)

By the time Rumi was composing his massive poem, the Mathnawi, Aesop’s fables had already been circulating throughout the Mediterranean world for two thousand years. The fables were not seen as distinctively Greek, but had been adopted wholeheartedly by Arabic and Persian storytellers, such as Rumi. Like other Sufi teachers, Rumi made use of these secular stories side by side with religious parables and legends in order to reveal esoteric doctrines to his followers.

To give you an example of how Rumi appropriates an Aesop’s fable for mystical religious teaching, let us take Rumi’s version of the famous fable of the “lion’s share.” First, let’s start with a traditional Greek version of the fable, which features a lion who goes hunting with a donkey and a fox:

A lion and a donkey and a fox joined as partners, promising to go hunting together. They made a big catch, and the lion ordered the donkey to divide it among them. Making three equal portions, the donkey asked him to choose, but the lion was infuriated, feasted upon the donkey and then ordered the fox to make the division. 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 apportion things in this way, the fox replied: “From the donkey’s misfortune.” (Chambry #209)

This Greek story is a typical Aesop’s fable: witty, vicious, and wise. It certainly does not seem to contain profound revelations about the right relations of God and man, but this is precisely what Rumi discovers in the story. As soon as Rumi identifies the lion not with secular authority but with absolute divine authority, the way to a mystical understanding of the fable becomes clear.

Here is how Rumi begins his version: “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 the Aesopic tradition, you often find a moralizing preface to the telling of a fable, so it is not unusual to find a moral stated at the beginning of a fable like this. What is unusual is the profoundly religious theme that Rumi wants to illustrate with this fable: somehow the story of the lion and his hunting companions is going to turn into a lesson about the annihilation of dualism and unity with God.

Just as in Aesop, the three animals — in Rumi’s version, a lion, a wolf, and a fox — go hunting together, and when it is time to divide the spoils, the wolf and the fox foolishly expect that the lion will share with them, not realizing just whom they are dealing with. There they are, in the presence of God, and they do not even recognize him. The lion, in fact, finds it a bit embarrassing to consort with these limited beings: “A moon like this is disgraced by the stars: it is amongst the stars for generosity’s sake,” as Rumi explains. “The spirit has now become the body’s fellow-traveller.” For Rumi, the animals’ hunting expedition is a metaphor for the human condition itself, in which the spirit (the lion) is shackled to the body, trapped in this corporeal partnership.

The lion then orders the wolf to divide the spoils. The wolf divides the spoils into three parts, one for each of the partners in the hunt. Outraged, the lion tears off the wolf’s head, just as the lion tore the donkey to pieces in the Aesop’s fable. Yet, unlike the lion in Aesop who simply munches on the donkey in silence, the lion offers an explanation of his actions: “Since the sight of me did not transport thee out of thyself, a spirit like this must needs die miserably.” To die thus at the claws of the lion is actually a blessing for the wolf: “Since thou wert not passing away from thyself in my presence, ’twas an act of grace to behead thee.”

Then, just as in the Aesop’s fable, the lion turns to the fox and orders him to divide up the spoil. The fox does not save even a morsel for himself in this version of the story; he gives everything to the lion. Again as in Aesop, the lion asks the fox where he learned to divide the spoils in this way, and the fox replies: “O king of the world, I learned it from the fate of the wolf.”

But this is not the end of the story. In Rumi’s version, the lion then gives the whole of the spoils to the fox, and  speaks these words of blessing: “Inasmuch as thou hast become pledge to love of me, pick up all of it and take it and depart. O fox, since thou hast become entirely mine, how should I hurt thee when thou hast become myself?” The fox then thanks the lion for giving him the privilege of having gone second, after the wolf; otherwise, he would surely have met the same fate as the wolf. This allows Rumi to conclude that we are lucky to be living now, with the examples of past generations to guide us: “So that we have heard of the chastisements which God inflicted upon the past generations in the preceding time, that we, like the fox may keep better watch over ourselves from considering the fate of those ancient wolves.”

Rumi has thus taken a traditional Aesop’s fable and turned it into a meditation on oneness with God and obedience to divine authority. This approach exemplifies what Randy has called the “religious theme” in myths and legends about the confrontation between the human and the divine.  Rumi’s fox worships at the feet of the lion, addressing him with the words “O king of the world,” and is duly rewarded for this devotion. In Aesop, on the other hand, there is a much more strongly humanistic theme: after seeing what happened to the would-be rebel who defied the lion, the fox concedes the lion’s share, but the words she speaks are not words of worship. Instead, the fox uses her wit to provide a sly critique of the lion, even if she cannot challenge his authority directly. If you were to use just one word to characterize the attitude of Aesop’s fox, it would have to be “cynical.” In my next article, I’ll consider the archetypal Cynic philosopher, Diogenes of Sinope, and the famous legend of “Diogenes and his lamp.” This, too, is a story that shows up both in Aesop’s fables and in the mystical poetry of Rumi, providing us with another opportunity to consider the shifting fortunes of the religious and humanistic themes in the Greek and Muslim traditions.

References

• Chambry, Emile (editor). Fables / Esope. 1926. (The full Greek text of this fable is available online, along with an English version, at Aesopica.net.)
• Nicholson, Reynold A. (editor and translator). The Mathnawi of Jalaluddin Rumi. 1926 (reprinted 1990); The Mathnawi of Jalaluddin Rumi: Commentary. 1937 (reprinted 1985). The fable of the lion is found in Book I, beginning at line 3009.