The Eagle and the Beetle

The story of the feud between the eagle and the beetle is one of Aesop's Fables and often referred to in Classical times. It is numbered 3 in the Perry Index and the episode became proverbial. Although different in detail, it can be compared to the fable of The Eagle and the Fox. In both cases the eagle believes itself safe from retribution for an act of violence and is punished by the destruction of its young.

A hare that is fleeing from an eagle begs a beetle for shelter. The beetle pleads that the right of asylum is guaranteed by Zeus but the eagle, being the bird of Zeus, arrogantly disregards this and tears the hare to pieces. In revenge, the beetle climbs to the eagle’s nest and rolls out its eggs, following it up the higher it builds. Finally the eagle lays its eggs in the lap of Zeus but the beetle flies about the god’s head, or in some versions rolls a ball of dung onto him, causing the god to leap up and let the eggs fall to the ground. There are alternative accounts in which the episode of the hare does not appear at all and the feud is related as being of long standing and consisting of raids on each others’ nesting places. The story was told by William Caxton of a weasel and an eagle while Gilles Corrozet tells the story of an ant and an eagle in his emblem book

In ancient times the story became the basis for an ironical Greek proverb, ‘the dung beetle serving as midwife to the eagle’ (ὁ κάνθαρος αετòν μαιεύεται), taken from a line of Aristophanes Lysistrata. This was recorded by Erasmus in his Adagia (1507), along with a Latin alternative, Scarabaeus aquilam quaerit (a dung beetle hunting an eagle), used of a weaker person taking on a powerful adversary. Where Erasmus told the story at length, Andrea Alciato devoted a short Latin poem to yet another variation in his Emblematum Liber (1534) under the title A mimumus timiendum (Even the least are to be feared). There he explained that “though inferior in physical strength, it is superior in strategy. It hides itself secretly in the eagle’s feathers without being felt, in order to attack its enemy’s nest across the lofty skies. It bores into the eggs and prevents the hoped-for offspring from developing.”

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