'Full of wise saws.'
Shakespeare: As You Like It.
'Fables,' says Aristotle, 'are adapted to deliberate oratory, and possess this advantage: that to hit upon facts which have occurred in point is difficult; but with regard to fables it is comparatively easy. For an orator ought to construct them just as he does his illustrations, if he be able to discover the point of similitude, a thing which will be easy to him if he be of a philosophical turn of mind.'[42]
The truth of this is exemplified in the use which has been made of the apologue by orators in all ages, but especially in early times.
The following instances of the application of fables to particular occasions are recorded. The fable of The Belly and the Members, which is reputed to be the oldest in existence, is of sterling excellence, as well as of venerable antiquity.[43] Its lucid moral is truth in essence. The logic of its conclusion is as invulnerable as the demonstration of a proposition in Euclid. There is no gainsaying it, turn it how we may, and, with all due deference to Montaigne, only one moral is deducible from it. This is solid bottom ground and bed rock, safe for chain-cable holding; safe for building upon, however high the superstructure. Striking use was made of it by Menenius Agrippa when the rabble refused to pay their share of the taxes necessary for carrying on the business of the State.
In the 'Coriolanus' of Shakespeare, Menenius, the Roman Consul, is introduced in character,[44] and recounts the apologue to the disaffected citizens of Rome. Thus the dramatist, in his superb way:
Men. Either you must
Confess yourselves wondrous malicious,
Or be accused of folly. I shall tell you
A pretty tale: it may be you have heard it;
But since it serves my purpose, I will venture
To stale 't a little more.
1 Cit. Well, I'll hear it, sir; yet you must not think
to fob off our disgrace with a tale; but, an 't please you,
deliver.
Men. There was a time when all the body's Members
Rebelled against the Belly; thus accused it:
That only like a gulf it did remain
I' the midst o' the body, idle and inactive,
Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing
Like labour with the rest; where th' other instruments
Did see and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel,
And, mutually participate, did minister
Unto the appetite and affection common
Of the whole body. The Belly answered:
1 Cit. Well, sir, what answer made the Belly?