Out of the frying pan into the fire

• This everyday expression means that if you exchange the bad situation you are in, for what looks a better one, it could turn out to be far worse.
• The expression comes from one of Aesop's Fables, ‘The Stag and the Lion’. Aesop lived between c. 620-560 BCE.

Aesop’s Fable ‘The Stag and the Lion’

• A Stag was being pursued by a pack of Hounds and managed to take refuge in a cave. Unfortunately for him, a Lion lived in the cave, and the Stag was trapped.
• The Stag expressed his misfortune by crying out that he had escaped the jaws of the Hounds, only to fall victim to a Lion.