page_title: The Ape and the Fox
section_title: The story and its spread
hierarchical_section_title: The Ape and the Fox / The story and its spread
caption_attribution_description: English: A 19th century netsuke in the form of a costumed, dancing Monkey; Hirado ware; porcelain with reserve area, brown with underglaze blue.
context_page_description: The Ape and the Fox is a fable credited to Aesop and is numbered 81 in the Perry Index. However, the story goes back before Aesop’s time and an alternative variant may even be of Oriental origin.
context_section_description: The story relates how animals meet after the death of the lion to choose a new king and are so impressed by the capering of an ape that they crown him. The fox had been one of the contestants and now plays the part of courtier. Taking the ape aside, he says that he has found something to whet the royal appetite and leads him to a baited trap. Caught in the trap, the ape accuses the fox of treachery. The latter replies that someone so gullible and greedy is unfit to rule. Some versions provide the moral that those who aspire to rule must first learn to govern themselves.
  The fable is very old and may predate Aesop, since it seems to have been used by the 7th century BCE poet Archilochos. In Europe it was for a long time restricted to Greek sources but it was one of those that also travelled eastwards into Central Asia from about the 8th century CE. Papyrus fragments of the fable from this era have been discovered in both Sogdian and Uyghur. 
  The fable of the ape and the fox began to appear in other European countries during the 17th century. Hieronymus Osius devoted a Neo-Latin poem to it, as did Gabriele Faerno. The latter ends with the moral that "desert must be proved by deeds" (ostendit comissus honos, quam quisque probandus). The French version of the fable by La Fontaine ends with a similar reflection as the fox chides the monkey, "Do you aspire to govern us, unable to control yourself?"  
  The commentary that follows the telling by Roger L'Estrange condemns all the participants: the electors for their unthinking choice, the unqualified monkey for accepting the office and the envious fox for its malice. Samuel Croxall too deplores the choice, while Thomas Bewick's edition reflects that "when Apes are in power, Foxes will never be wanting to play upon them", criticising the self-serving courtier and the foolishness that exposes authority to scorn. There was also a poem by John Byrom, subtitled "The fruits of greediness and credulity" and designed for school recitation, that was close in wording to Croxall’s account.
caption: A 19th-century Japanese netsuke in the form of a dancing monkey
exif: {}