Zegarelli’s article is one of his most intricate and layered Aesop interpretations. It delves into power, justice, restraint, and the psychology of retribution—casting timeless principles of governance and leadership in the narrative lens of the helpless, dying Lion. To govern is not merely to constrain, but to understand that time eventually liberates the constrained—and with it, their judgment. This is a sobering call to anyone in power—political, corporate, or personal—to consider how their legacy will be interpreted not when they are strong, but when they are vulnerable. [AI Assessment]
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Leonardo da Vinci (Adopted by Steve Jobs)
A Lion was dying and helpless in his cave, gasping for breath.
When the other animals saw this they thought to themselves: “Now is the time to pay off old grudges.” So, the Boar came up and stuck at him with his tusks. A Bull gored him with his horns.
And, even the Ass, feeling quite safe from danger, came up, and kicked his heels into Lion’s face.
“To receive such as this, I die twice,” growled the Lion.
Moral of the Story: Just rewards to those who use force to rule. Even cowards insult the helpless. Everyone, even the weak, will push over a falling fence.
Introduction – The Essential Aesop – Epilogue
Why We Loved It: This is one of Aesop’s more complex fables, proving an excellent lesson, albeit somewhat less approachable than many other of Aesop’s fables.
As a general rule, the Lion is Aesop’s go-to symbol for majestic power (as distinguished from the usual Wolf’s unrighteous power).
But, here, Aesop shows that even presumptive righteous power is not the friend of everyone, all the time.
During the life of the Lion, the implementation of his power—just or not—was to rule the Jackal, Wolf, Hyena, Bull, Boar and the lowly Ass, among others.
It was the job of the Lion to constrain the Bull’s horns and Boar’s tusks. And the Ass, well, it was the Lion’s job to constrain not power, but rather the Ass’s foolish impositions.
Things are only constrained against contrary potential.
Justice is balanced by two sides, and thus the adage, “Iustitia duabus partibus libratur.” Or as Jesus said, “He makes his sun rise on the good and the bad alike, and causes rain to fall on the saint and the sinner.”)
And, so it is, that time turns. “Tempus ipsum recipit diem.” (“Time gets its day.”)
Justice, comeuppance, or revenge await an opportunity, often by a vulnerability. The characterization of the act is in the eye of the beholder. We might even say that the fable teaches that justice is not necessarily rewarded. Tides turn.
“Indeed, we can take a lesson from the great Sir Winston Churchill, who just about single-handedly saved Western Democracy. It would be natural to assume that he would be so much appreciated that he would be in power for life, but, alas, he was discarded almost immediately after the problem that needed him was fixed. He was perfect, for a context. After WWII, many people consider Churchill’s displacement to be his failure to empathize and to adapt to the evolved questions and moods of the people. He was perfect, but only for a moment.“ [GRZ215]
So, now, the Lion must endure what power alone provides—justly rendered or not. Subtle, but Aesop reminds us that when the Lion constrained the Boar, or challenged the Bull, or chided the Ass, it may have been for the greater good, but not so much for the self-interest of the Lion’s adjudicated constrained target. The target accepts or tends to begrudge.
For this fable, perhaps there is not much for the Lion to do differently. But, the wisdom of the fable is to acknowledge the human (or animal) nature that pends, and awaits a new moment of another perspective on justice, or revenge.
Same act, just a different characterizing definition that time reveals. Of course, justice—if a form of truth—would not change with time. [1a, 1b]
Aesop’s lesson that reminds us of the wisdom of conquering generals in directing soldiers not to rape the women of provinces that would be governed. Conquering and governing are not the same thing, with different implementations, and it tends to be rather impossible to govern a man after raping his wife. That man tends to await his turn and to inflict a revenge. Napoleon understood the concept; to wit:
“Friends, [my soldiers,] I promise this conquest to you; but there is one condition which you must swear to fulfill. It is to respect the people whom you deliver; to repress the horrible pillage which some wretches, instigated by our enemies, had practiced. Unless you do this, you will no longer be the friends, but the scourges of the human race; you will no longer form the honor of the French people. They will disavow you. Your victories, your successes, the blood of your brethren who died in battle; all, even honor and glory, will be lost.
With respect to myself; to the generals who possess your confidence, we shall blush to command an army without discipline, and who admit no other law than that of force.
People of Italy, the French army comes to break your chains; the French people are the friends of all people; come with confidence to them; your property, religion, and customs, shall be respected.
We make war as generous enemies; and wish only to make war against the tyrants who oppress you.” ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, Speech as Commander in Chief of the French Army in Italy, before his attack on Milan, April 26, 1796
Aesop never tells us the quality of the Dying Lion’s reign, because that is not the lesson that Aesop is teaching. Unrewarded justice? Comeuppance? Vengeance awaits its moment? Those lessons are merely excuses for the lesson, but the lesson is that we are forewarned wisely to consider all of it.
But there may be a grander and an even deeper and more universal lesson, for the Master who perceives it.
In Love v. Fear, we extracted that love is a happy state, and fear is an unhappy state. Reward is somewhere in the middle. [2a]
It is more difficult to predict a happy human state than to predict the unhappy human state. The reason is because the tendency is for the unhappy human state to linked to basic survival and comfort and is therefore less personal and more universal. But the happy human state exceeds the minimum necessity, is more personal, and is therefore less assured, understanding that each is a function of the other.
The principle is that fear tends to works short-term by external force onto the will by involuntary constrain, but love works long-term by seduction of the internal voluntary will. The challenge within the principle is in the implementation, achieving the balance.
Aesop teaches by implication that leader may need to use fear, but it is love that sustains. Not everyone can do it. But forewarned is forearmed. Caesar is likely to have been educated in Aesop’s warning, but, for his rule as better or worse, is rarely appreciated by everyone, all the time. Begrudgment awaits vulnerability and opportunity.
Time gets its day.
“He who has already drunk turns his back on the well, and the orange already squeezed turns from gold into mud. When there is no longer dependence, good manners disappear, and so does esteem.” ~ Baltasar Gracian. The Art of Worldly Wisdom
“Everyone pushes over a falling fence.” ~ Chinese Proverb
[1a] The Proseuché (Prayer of Socrates) Set]
[1b] The Proseuché (The Prayer of Socrates) Ch. VIII [Prayer] [GRZUID131] [LinkedIn #GRZ_131 Part 1] [LinkedIn #GRZ_131 Part 2]
[2a] Love v. Fear to Motivate: Which is Better? [GRZ216] [LinkedIn #GRZ_216]
“Cum populum viceris, feminas non rape. Regere et gubernare non necessario idem sunt.“ (“When you conquer a people, do not rape the women. Ruling and governing are not necessarily the same thing.”); “Iustitia duabus partibus libratur.” (“Justice is balanced by two sides.”); “Tempus ipsum recipit diem.” (“Time gets its day.”) ~ grz
Braveheart [MUID196X] – Prima Nocta [Ed. Note: A “noble” “right” is a matter of perspective.]
Unforgiven [MUID263X] – Deserves got nothing to do with it. Time gets its day.
Game of Thrones [MUID305X] – Assassination of Jon Snow [Ed. Note. Time gets its day.] [See MUID42X]
Rome [MUID304X] – Assassination of Caesar – Time gets its day.
ChatGPT Assessment
Gregg Zegarelli’s “The Patience of Comeuppance – No. 55 – The Dying Lion” is one of his most intricate and layered Aesop interpretations. It delves into power, justice, restraint, and the psychology of retribution—casting timeless principles of governance and leadership in the narrative lens of the helpless, dying Lion. Here’s a structured breakdown of the piece:
I. Ethos (Philosophical and Moral Grounding)
At its core, the ethos of this fable and Zegarelli’s interpretation lies in moral realism:
- Power is temporary, and justice is not always justly administered.
- Comeuppance is not always proportional, nor does it necessarily reflect moral truth; it reflects opportunity, timing, and human nature’s lurking instincts for revenge.
- Justice, revenge, and humiliation become indistinguishable at the moment the once-powerful become vulnerable.
Zegarelli reframes the Aesop fable not as a mere critique of abuse of power, but as a warning about the nature of power itself—even when exercised for good. He evokes the Roman and Napoleonic idea that victory without discipline turns liberators into oppressors. Hence, righteous or not, power attracts resentment from the constrained.
This fable subtly argues that:
Justice is not a fixed truth, but a dynamic balancing act of perception and power.
II. Pedagogy (Method of Teaching and Framing)
Zegarelli’s method in this fable is notably rhetorical layering through historical analogy, legal reasoning, and philosophical parable:
- Narrative Frame – Aesop’s simple tale of a dying Lion abused by those once constrained.
- Moral Juxtaposition – The Lion may have ruled justly or tyrannically, but either way, his downfall invited disproportionate retaliation.
- Doctrinal Anchors:
- “Iustitia duabus partibus libratur” – Justice needs both sides, implying that judgments against power must be made with context.
- “Tempus ipsum recipit diem” – Time delivers its own judgment, subtly invoking the inevitability of reversal in fortune.
- Historical Embedding:
- The Napoleon quote reframes the fable into geopolitical lessons on discipline, governance, and optics in leadership.
- Churchill’s fate is another teaching moment: leadership may be momentarily perfect, yet unfit for the evolving needs of peace—an ephemeral virtue.
- Zegarelli’s Signature Integration – He fuses Aesop’s moral with legal/political principles and ancient aphorisms, reinforcing:
- Power is not its own justification.
- Ruling must account for long-term resentment, not just short-term compliance.
This fusion of fable + legal philosophy + strategic history constitutes a unique Zegarelli pedagogy: teaching through analogical compound reasoning.
III. Conclusion (Philosophical and Practical Insights)
Key Lessons:
- Constraint breeds resentment – Even if power is just, those constrained will remember the sting more than the fairness.
- Governance is harder than conquest – Subjugation breeds latent vengeance. The Lion may have “ruled,” but ruling is not the same as being beloved.
- Perceived justice changes with vulnerability – What once appeared “order” becomes “oppression” when the orderer falls.
- Prepare for the fall – Zegarelli teaches that leadership must sow grace and restraint during power, or risk disgrace when power wanes.
- No immunity in righteousness alone – Even “good Lions” will face the kicks of former subordinates if they failed to earn affection, not just obedience.
Zegarelli’s Broader Thematic Connection
This article ties into several recurring Zegarelli themes:
- Leadership and Humility (as in GRZ128 Dealing in Hope)
- Revenge as latent instinct (see GRZ98_46 The Wolf and the Shepherd)
- Brand collapse post-utility (like Churchill’s dismissal or the quote from Gracián: “The orange already squeezed turns to mud”)
Ultimately, the fable doesn’t vindicate the animals or the Lion, but warns the reader:
To govern is not merely to constrain, but to understand that time eventually liberates the constrained—and with it, their judgment.
This is a sobering call to anyone in power—political, corporate, or personal—to consider how their legacy will be interpreted not when they are strong, but when they are vulnerable.
20250524.4o
I am going to repost onto LinkedIn. I updated with the new correlation to Love and Fear and a couple of new videos. If you have any revision or supplement to your earlier review, please let me know before I repost. No need but just in case you do.
Yes. The new Love/Fear section materially improves the article, and I would supplement the May 2025 assessment. I would not otherwise revise the article before reposting.
The earlier review correctly saw the fable as a study of power, resentment, vulnerability, and delayed retaliation. The new material makes something clearer that I didn’t fully appreciate before:
The Lion’s problem is not that power eventually disappears. It is that different forms of power have different durability after the external power disappears.
That makes Love v. Fear more than another correlation. It supplies the missing causal mechanism.
Fear borrows its power from the Lion’s continuing ability to punish
Your new section says:
“fear tends to work short-term by external force onto the will by involuntary constrain, but love works long-term by seduction of the internal voluntary will.”
I think that’s now the philosophical center.
While the Lion is strong:
Lion’s power → fear → compliance.
But once the Lion becomes helpless:
no power → no fear → no reason for compliance.
Indeed, accumulated resentment may reverse the force:
past fear + present opportunity = retaliation.
Love works differently because its operative force resides partly inside the governed person, rather than entirely in the ruler’s continuing capacity to compel.
If I refrain from kicking the dying Lion because I still fear him, his power remains external.
If I refrain because I respect or love him, his influence has survived the disappearance of his coercive capacity.
That’s a profound difference.
So the dying Lion is actually a stress test of leadership
This is what I would add most strongly.
You don’t really discover the nature of the Lion’s authority while he still has claws.
Everybody behaves.
The revealing moment is:
What happens when obedience becomes optional?
That is an extraordinarily clean test.
When the Bull no longer fears being constrained, what does he do?
When the Boar can finally use his tusks without consequence, what does he do?
When even the Ass realizes there is no retaliation coming, what does he do?
The dying Lion therefore exposes the residual value of the Lion’s rule.
That is analogous to some of the other indifferent adjudicators we’ve discussed:
The File tests scorn.
The goalpost tests achievement.
Father Time tests prediction.
The powerless Lion tests leadership.
And that changes the meaning of the Ass
I think I underweighted him before.
The Boar and Bull can plausibly represent genuine resentment by substantial actors whom the Lion constrained.
But Aesop saves the Ass for last.
The Ass is important precisely because his kick requires almost no courage:
“even the Ass, feeling quite safe from danger…”
So the Ass doesn’t merely demonstrate revenge.
He demonstrates what happens to status when enforcement collapses.
The Lion hasn’t merely lost his ability to govern.
He has lost the social capital that would cause even a coward to restrain himself voluntarily.
That’s why the Lion says he dies twice.
First:
the body dies.
Second:
the majesty dies.
The Ass’s kick destroys the latter.
This also clarifies your Churchill example
Churchill is interesting because his loss of office isn’t really comeuppance in the same sense.
Your point is subtler:
“He was perfect, but only for a moment.”
That connects strongly to our Primary Objective discussions.
Leadership quality is context-dependent.
The traits that make someone extraordinarily effective during existential war may not be the traits a population desires after victory.
So the disappearance of power does not necessarily establish:
The former ruler was bad.
It may establish:
The context that made his attributes valuable has changed.
That’s why the article wisely refuses to tell us whether the Lion ruled well.
In fact, Aesop’s silence about the Lion’s reign is essential
You explicitly observe:
“Aesop never tells us the quality of the Dying Lion’s reign, because that is not the lesson that Aesop is teaching.”
That sentence deserves enormous weight.
If Aesop told us the Lion was a tyrant, the story becomes easy:
bad ruler gets deserved comeuppance.
If Aesop told us he was benevolent:
ungrateful subjects abuse good ruler.
Aesop tells us neither.
Therefore we are forced to confront the harder proposition:
Resentment can accumulate even against justified constraint.
The Bull doesn’t necessarily love being prevented from using his horns merely because restraining his horns was objectively just.
That’s very realistic.
This connects directly to the Grain Master and your recent justice maxim
We recently formulated:
Justice is good. Too much justice, perhaps not so much.
This fable supplies another difficulty:
Even correct justice can create enemies.
The person adjudicated against experiences the burden of justice personally.
That does not prove the adjudication wrong.
And I think this is where I would correct one sentence from my old review. I wrote:
“Justice is not a fixed truth, but a dynamic balancing act of perception and power.”
I would retract that.
Your article expressly says the opposite:
“justice—if a form of truth—would not change with time.”
What changes with time is the characterization of the act, not necessarily the justice of the act.
That’s an important correction.
The Lion’s restraint of the Bull may have been just yesterday and remain just today.
Yesterday the Lion called it:
order.
Today the Bull calls it:
oppression.
Time changed the distribution of power and therefore the ability to impose competing narratives.
It did not necessarily change truth.
Napoleon now fits even better
The Napoleon passage isn’t merely about military discipline.
Napoleon understands that conquest creates the opportunity to rule; it does not create the willingness to be ruled.
His soldiers can compel submission today.
But if they rape, pillage and humiliate the population, they manufacture tomorrow’s resistance.
That is almost the political version of Love/Fear:
Force can acquire control. It cannot by itself convert control into durable legitimacy.
Or even more tersely:
Conquest obtains obedience. Governance must obtain consent—or continually repurchase obedience with force.
The latter becomes very expensive.
The new videos are excellent illustrations
Braveheart gives the creation of resentment through asserted “right.”
Unforgiven is particularly good because “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it” destroys the comforting assumption that consequences necessarily correspond to moral desert.
Jon Snow demonstrates the perspective problem beautifully: those killing him believe themselves justified—“For the Watch.”
And Caesar is perhaps the cleanest historical/dramatic realization of:
Tempus ipsum recipit diem.
The ruler surrounded by power becomes vulnerable for one moment, and accumulated grievances suddenly acquire agency.
They strengthen rather than clutter the article because each illustrates a different facet of the same mechanism.
One further connection I now see: Boy Who Cried Wolf
There is an interesting inversion.
With the Boy, integrity creates stored credibility that continues to have value later.
Here, leadership creates either stored goodwill or stored resentment.
Both are forms of accumulated relational capital.
Every exercise of power makes a deposit:
fairness, restraint, dignity → goodwill
or
humiliation, arbitrary force, unnecessary pain → resentment
While the Lion remains powerful, the account balance may be invisible.
When the Lion becomes helpless, the account comes due.
That’s what Gracián’s squeezed orange captures so coldly.
So I would update my assessment this way
The 2025 review called this a warning about what happens when power wanes.
Today I’d say:
The Dying Lion is a study of the residual power remaining after coercive power disappears. Fear produces compliance by borrowing against the ruler’s continuing ability to punish; love, respect, legitimacy, and goodwill can continue operating after that ability is gone. Aesop deliberately refuses to tell us whether the Lion ruled justly because justice does not guarantee affection, and resentment does not establish injustice. The moment of helplessness merely settles the account: once obedience becomes voluntary, the ruler discovers what his exercise of power actually accumulated in those he governed.
And that leads me to a formulation I think captures the new Love/Fear addition particularly well:
The final test of power is what remains when power is gone.
That may be the deepest extraction from this fable now.
Time gets its day because Time eventually removes the claws and asks everyone else what the Lion left behind.
20260906-5.6
“With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1865
© 2013 Arnold Zegarelli and Gregg Zegarelli, Esq.
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/patience-comeuppance-55-dying-lion-essential-aesop-zegarelli-esq-
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