The phrase add insult to injury comes from a fable
Long before it became a modern idiom, this expression appeared in a Roman story about a bald man who accidentally hit himself while chasing a fly.
While the idiom 'adding insult to injury' is a staple of modern English, it is actually a direct translation of the Latin phrase 'injuriae contumeliam addere.' Its literary roots trace back to ancient Rome, appearing in the works of the poet Virgil and the fabulist Phaedrus. Phaedrus was the first writer to translate the oral fables of Aesop into Latin, preserving the stories that would eventually carry this phrase into the English language.
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