The body politic is a polity—such as a city, realm, or state—considered metaphorically as a physical body. Historically, the sovereign is typically portrayed as the body's head, and the analogy may also be extended to other anatomical parts, as in political readings of Aesop's fable of "The Belly and the Members". The image originates in ancient Greek philosophy, beginning in the 6th century BC, and was later extended in Roman philosophy. Following the high and late medieval revival of the Byzantine Corpus Juris Civilis in Latin Europe, the "body politic" took on a jurisprudential significance by being identified with the legal theory of the corporation, gaining salience in political thought from the 13th century on. In English law the image of the body politic developed into the theory of the king's two bodies and the Crown as corporation sole.
The frontispiece of Hobbes's Leviathan shows a body formed of multitudinous citizens, surmounted by a king's head.
A visualization of the body politic metaphor in a 14th-century French manuscript. The king is head. Next, the seneschals, bailiffs, and provosts and other judges are compared to eyes and ears. The counsellors and wise men are linked to the heart. As defenders of the commonwealth, the knights are the hands. Because of their constant voyages, the merchants are associated with the legs. Finally, laborers, who work close to the earth and support the body, are its feet.
The imperial eagle in Dante's Paradiso, depicted by Giovanni di Paolo in the 1440s
Elizabethan jurists held that the immaturity of Edward VI's body natural was expunged by his body politic.
The Belly and the Members
The Belly and the Members is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 130 in the Perry Index. It has been interpreted in varying political contexts over the centuries.
Wenceslas Hollar's illustration from John Ogilby's version of the fables, 1668.
Kawanabe Kyosai's Aesopic satire, The lazy one in the middle, 1870-80