Stoicism, the Farmer, & the Viper
Do not be shocked when wicked people do wicked things
Bestow your favors on the good; for a goodly treasury is a store of gratitude laid up in the heart of an honest man. If you benefit bad men, you will have the same reward as those who feed stray dogs; for these snarl alike at those who give them food and at the passing stranger; and just so base men wrong alike those who help and those who harm them. — Isocrates, Demonicus
According to Plato, Socrates tried his hand at putting Aesop’s Fables to verse while he was in prison awaiting execution. It should be no surprise then that the ancient Stoics, who loved Socrates and modelled themselves upon him, were also interested in Aesop.
Seneca wrote to an acquaintance suggesting that he should translate Aesop from Greek into Latin, and as we shall see, he appears to allude to one of the fables in his own writings. Marcus Aurelius alludes in passing to the fable of the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse. In my recent book, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, I used several of Aesop’s fables to illustrate the teachings of Stoic philosophy.
Aesop’s fable known as The Farmer and the Viper can be interpreted as encapsulating one of the Stoics’ favourite pieces of moral wisdom. It is told by the 1st century AD Roman poet Phaedrus as…
