It is better to endure some flaws in a mild and gentle government than to face the greater evils of tyranny and oppression.
As Aesop was traveling through Greece, he happened to pass through Athens just after Pisistratus had abolished the popular state and usurped sovereign power. Observing that the Athenians bore the yoke, though mild and easy, with much impatience, he related to them the following fable:
The commonwealth of Frogs, a discontented and fickle race, weary of liberty and fond of change, petitioned Jupiter to grant them a king. The good-natured deity, in order to indulge this request with as little harm to the petitioners as possible, threw them down a Log. Initially, they regarded their new monarch with great reverence and kept a respectful distance. But perceiving its tame and peaceable disposition, they gradually ventured to approach it with more familiarity, until they eventually conceived the utmost contempt for it.
In this disposition, they renewed their request to Jupiter, begging him to bestow upon them another king. In his wrath, the Thunderer sent them a Crane, who, no sooner having taken possession of his new dominions, began to devour his subjects one after another in a most capricious and tyrannical manner. They were now far more dissatisfied than before. When they applied to Jupiter a third time, they were dismissed with the response that the evil they complained of was one they had imprudently brought upon themselves, and they had no other remedy now but to submit to it with patience.
