Androcles (Greek: Ἀνδροκλῆς, alternatively spelled Androclus in Latin) is the main character of a common folk tale about a man befriending a lion.

It is numbered 563 in the Perry Index and can be compared to Aesop's The Lion and the Mouse in both its general trend and in its moral of the reciprocal nature of mercy.

There, he is condemned to be devoured by wild animals in the Circus Maximus in the presence of an emperor who is named in the account as Gaius Caesar, presumably Caligula.

[9] A century later, the story of taking a thorn from a lion's paw was related as an act of Saint Jerome in the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine (c. 1260).

The later retelling, "Of the Remembrance of Benefits", in the Gesta Romanorum (Deeds of the Romans) of about 1330 in England, has a mediaeval setting and again makes the protagonist a knight.

[1] In the earliest English printed collection of Aesop's Fables by William Caxton, the tale appears as The lyon & the pastour or herdman and reverts to the story of a shepherd who cares for the wounded lion.

[11] Titled Mutua Benevolentia primaria lex naturae est, it was translated by William Cowper as "Reciprocal kindness: the primary law of nature".

However, a study for the painting has recently been discovered and shows Androcles as a nearly naked warrior brandishing his sword in the stadium while the lion lies on the ground and is – following the account of Aulus Gellius – "gently licking his feet".

[22] In the 20th century, Jean-Léon Gérôme depicted Androcles in a painting tentatively dated 1902 and now in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Buenos Aires).

Jan Pieter van Baurscheit the Elder's sandstone statue, executed between 1700 and 1725, is now at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and shows a triumphant figure bestriding a very small lion that rears up to look at him.

[28] Its frisky behaviour brings to mind Aulus Gellius' description of the lion "wagging his tail in a mild and caressing way, after the manner and fashion of fawning dogs".

[29] In 1751 the English monumental sculptor Henry Cheere created two white marble chimneypieces showing the slave bending over the lion's paw to draw out the thorn.

[33] About 1898, Jean-Léon Gérôme, who was soon to paint that scene too, produced a sculpture of Androcles leading the lion about on his tour of the Roman taverns.

Titled Le Mendiant (the beggar), it is made of bronze gilt and shows the former slave standing with one hand on the lion's mane and a begging bowl at his feet.

[34] In the 20th century the American sculptor Frederick Charles Shrady incorporated the theme of removing the thorn from the paw into a modernistic design.

[36] The image of the grateful beast was a natural choice for the medals awarded in yearly recognition of prize-winners at the Royal Dick Veterinary College in Edinburgh.