The Old Man and his Sons

[4] When the Neo-Latin poet Hieronymus Osius included the fable in his 1564 collection, he added consideration of the effects of disunion: "Just as concord supplies potency in human affairs, so a quarrelsome life deprives people of their strength.

[6] That the lesson of the fable could be applied to statecraft as well as personal affairs had earlier been realised by Pseudo-Plutarch[1] and those others who told the story of ancient rulers.

In more modern times, Pieter de la Court commented on its applicability to the Dutch Republic in his retelling of the story in Sinryke Fabulen (Amsterdam, 1685) as "A farmer and his seven quarrelsome sons".

[7] The story is prefaced with the proverb Eendragt maakt magt, een twist verkwist (Unity makes strength, strife wastes).

[8] It was also the perception of Alexander Sumarokov, whose variant of the fable explains the weakness of the Russian lands and domination by Tatars in the past as due to their division among numerous princes.

[9] Some of these show a man crouched with one knee on a bundle of sticks, straining to break them, in a pose that appears related to John Tenniel's picture of the scene in the edition of Aesop's fables that he illustrated.

[10] The fable was also referred to by American trade union organisations in the 20th century,[11] and it was among those chosen in 1970 by the activist Jacob Lawrence for illustration in gouaches which draw out the story's moral truth.