![]() They their stocks should unite, and the profits divide. These in business were join'd, and of course 'twas implied, ![]() Messrs Lion, Wolf, Tiger, Fox, Leopard & Co This firm once existed, I'd have you to know, The early 19th century writer Jefferys Taylor also retold the fable in terms of a commercial enterprise in his poem "The Beasts in Partnership": Ī Latin reference to Aesop's 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. Each of these the lion retains because he is king, the strongest, the bravest, and will kill the first who touches the fourth part. In La Fontaine's Fables there is a fourfold division between a heifer, a goat and a lamb ( Fables I.6). In both cases the lion begins by claiming portions as a legal right and retains the others with threats. Then on another occasion, when the lion is accompanied by a goat and a sheep, the deer they take is divided into four. 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. Both appear under the title "The Lion Goes Hunting" ( De Leone Venante). The number of differing variations circulating by the time of the Middle Ages is witnessed by the fact that Marie de France included two in her 12th century Ysopet. 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." This was listed as Fable 339 in the Perry Index and was later the version followed by William Caxton in his 1484 collection of the Fables. It then relates how a cow, a goat and a sheep go hunting together with a lion. ![]() The early Latin version of Phaedrus begins with the reflection that "Partnership with the mighty is never trustworthy". Illustration of the fable from Francis Barlow's edition of Aesop's Fables, 1687
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