The Kite and the Doves

[1] It is an illustration of political foolishness and tells how doves are so terrified by attacks on them by a kite that they agree to its suggestion that he should be elected their king and protector.

After Phaedrus's work was lost sight of during the Middle Ages, a new version of the fable was created and it was not until after rediscovery of his original text during the Renaissance that some later collections followed his telling.

Samuel Croxall, harking back to a series of recent changes of regime, commented on how "many, with the Doves in the Fable, are so silly that they would admit of a Kite rather than be without a king".

Another concerns chickens, or else birds generally, who elect a dove to be their ruler because it is mild and will do them no harm; but when it is perceived as lacking authority, they choose a kite in its place and are then preyed upon by it.

[5] The latter story ends with the detail that the hawk kills many more of them than had perished formerly and concludes with the advice that the remedy should not make a bad situation worse.