The Trumpeter Taken Captive

In the Renaissance, Andrea Alciato included the story among his Emblemata under the heading Parem delinquentis et suasoris culpam esse (The fault belongs alike to the wrongdoer and the persuader)[2] and was followed by the English emblematist Geoffrey Whitney in asserting that those who encourage a crime are equally guilty.

[3] The Neo-Latin poets Hieronymus Osius[4] and Pantaleon Candidus[5] also follow Alciato in stating that, though the trumpeter is equally at fault, he causes greater harm.

Most illustrators of the fables pictured ancient battle scenes, but Thomas Bewick updated it by dressing the trumpeter in the uniform of his times.

[7] William Somervile similarly chooses a contemporary setting, making his "Captive Trumpeter" the French prisoner of "a party of hussars" and condemning him to an ignominious death.

A school edition of 1773 concludes severely, Boothby's contemporary, H.Steers, agrees: Another poet of that decade, the moralistic Fortescue Hitchins, devotes no less than fourteen lines to drawing the fable's lesson, applying it in addition to grumblers and gossips.