The Lion who was not a Tyrant1
Aesop on Justice and the Hare's Delight
(From Aesop’s Fables)
A LION WHO BECAME KING didn’t get angry and was neither cruel nor violent, but gentle and just, like a man might be. During his reign, the Lion King called a general assembly of all the birds and beasts for the purpose of sanctioning legal arrangements to bind the wolf and the lamb to live together in perfect peace and harmony, as well as the panther and the chamois, the tiger and the deer, and the dog and the hare. At the great assembly a hare was heard to say: “How I have longed to see this day! The weak can take their place at the side of the strong without fear!”
(Moral: When justice reigns in the state and all judgments are fair, the meek may also live in tranquility.)
Endnotes
1 Aesop, ‘’The Complete Fables. ‘’(Temble, Robert and Olivia, trans.) (London: Penguin Books, 1998), 144. ⇑
