Kick a man when he is down

• This everyday expression means it’s easy to criticise a person when they cannot defend themselves.
• The expression comes from one of Aesop's Fables, ‘The Dog and the Fox’. Aesop lived between c. 620-560 BCE.

Aesop’s Fable ‘The Dog and the Fox’

• A fox comes across a pack of dogs tearing apart a lion skin. The fox is scornful and remarks that it is easy to tear apart the skin, but if the lion was still in it, the lion would be tearing the dogs apart.
• The moral of the story is that it is easy to kick a man when he is down.