Meaning & Analysis
Among ‘wild’ creatures the most dangerous is likened to a backbiter (in some classical versions, a tyrant); among ‘tame’ creatures, the most dangerous is a flatterer. In short: overt predators kill by force, covert ones by the tongue.
Insights
Two faces of harm
‘Wild’ signals open aggression (tyranny), ‘tame’ signals intimate treachery (flattery). Both destroy—one by violence, the other by seduction—mapping public and private perils.
Speech as weapon
Backbiting and flattery turn language into a killing tool. Detraction wounds reputations from behind; flattery disables judgment from within.
Courtly corruption
At court, tyrants demand praise and flatterers supply it; their symbiosis starves truth and endangers the commonwealth.
Proximity hazard
‘Tame’ creatures live close to us; the proverb warns that dangers closest to our affections—compliant, smiling voices—can be most fatal.
Moral taxonomy
By classing vices as ‘beasts,’ the saying ranks them: brute force is worst among the wild, but among domesticated evils, the gentle-voiced deceiver wins the crown.
Classical pedigree
Often ascribed to the Seven Sages (Addison cites Thales), the canonical form reads: ‘Of all wild beasts, a tyrant is the worst; of all tame, a flatterer.’ The backbiter variant shows how transmission shifts emphasis from political violence to verbal malice.
Bawds of power
Flatterers enable tyranny by anesthetizing conscience and fact. Mirrors-for-princes literature (Erasmian and beyond) repeatedly names the flatterer as a ruler’s most deadly ‘tame’ companion.
Biblical and moral echoes
Scripture and early modern moralists vilify the backbiter and the smooth tongue; the proverb condenses that ethic into a zoology of vices—serpentine praise and lupine rule.
Psychology of manipulation
Flattery hijacks self-love, making the victim complicit; backbiting exploits absence, striking where defense is impossible. Both rely on asymmetries of information and access.
Public versus private harms
Tyranny is legible and resisted as ‘wild’; flattery flourishes in salons, families, and offices, where affection or dependence muffles alarm—hence ‘most deadly’ among the tame.
Definition by irony
Calling the flatterer ‘tame’ is ironic: meek demeanor hides lethal effect. The proverb teaches suspicion of gentleness that asks for nothing but assent.
Rhetorical Devices
Antithesis
Opposes ‘wild’ to ‘tame,’ ‘tyrant/backbiter’ to ‘flatterer,’ sharpening two modes of danger—force versus coaxing.
Parallelism
Balanced clauses (‘of wild beasts … of tame ones …’) give the maxim aphoristic snap and easy recall.
Zoomorphism
Human vices are cast as beasts, supplying vivid, mnemonic images for abstract harms.
Hyperbole
‘Most deadly’ heightens the warning, not as a statistic but as moral emphasis.
Merism by domain
‘Wild’ and ‘tame’ cover the spectrum of beings and, figuratively, of social contexts—public terror and private persuasion.
Transcription
Quotations
There be two whiche byte most deedly, of wylde beastes, the backbyter, and of tame the flatterer.
Of al tame creatures a flatterer is the worst.
It was a saying of Thales, the wise Milesian, That of all wild beasts, a tyrant is the worst; and of all tame beasts, a flatterer.
Cross References
- See APP., p. 577.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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