This chapter demonstrates that in sixteenth-century France the body politic metaphor was extremely flexible, providing answers - including contradictory ones - to a range of heated contemporary debates. The human body as political metaphor can be traced back to Aristotle, Plato and beyond (Hale, 1971: 18-47 and Zavadil, 2009), and continues to be used in contemporary political discourse (Musolff, 2004: 58-71). Thinking about both nature and politics has changed enormously but, to use a metaphor from evolutionary biology, the body metaphor has evolved to adapt to new semantic or conceptual environments. This essay will examine reasons for the success of the body metaphor in late sixteenth-century France. (Kathryn Banks)