The Bulls and the Lion

[3] In the 4th century CE, the rhetorician Themistius introduced a variant in which it is a fox that brings discord so that the lion can profit from it.

[4] The moral given the story was generally to distrust a foe and hold fast to friends, but in the Syntipas version it was later given a political turn: "This fable shows that the same is true of cities and people: when they are in agreement with one another, they do not allow their enemies to defeat them, but if they refuse to cooperate, it is an easy matter for their enemies to destroy them.

"[5] A similar sentiment was taken up in the collection illustrated by the English artist Francis Barlow in 1665, where the story is applied to state alliances.

[6] The lesson of holding fast to an alliance against the common foe was later repeated in a poem often reprinted during the American War of Independence, where there are 13 bulls in the field, the number of states in revolt.

[8] The poem had been taken from the series written by John Hawkesworth under the pseudonym H. Greville in The Gentleman's Magazine in 1741.