Androcles Classical accounts. Agostino Veneziano depicts the slave Androcles being freed by the Emperor in a work from 1516-17 now in the LACMA collection. There is also an early pen and wash drawing by Baldassare Peruzzi dating from the 1530s in the Hermitage Museum. Dependent on the account by Aulus Gellius, it depicts Androcles walking through a doorway with the lion on a lead at his heel. Other artists have preferred the scene of Androcles pulling the thorn from the lion's paw, as in Bernhard Rode's print of 1784. A later American example is Walter Inglis Anderson's block print scroll of
Thorn in the flesh thorn has been seen as a physical impediment that made Paul the object of ridicule, without necessarily making him physically weak. Peter Marshall suggests a "social debilitating disease or disfigurement" that would undermine his visionary claims. Others propose a speech impediment, which might explain the Corinthian accusation that he was forceful in writing but unimpressive in person (2 Cor 10:9-11). Other interpretations include: The phrase "thorn in the flesh" continues to be used as a metaphor for "a source of continual annoyance or trouble." It is synonymous with the phrase "thorn in the side," which is also of biblical origin,