In The Fable of the Belly, Menenius compares Rome with a human body. This is the so-called "body politic" metaphor.
Menenius draws parallels between, for instance, a belly and the senators since they distribute the goods to people who are part of their country the same way a belly distributes nutrients to the other parts of the body and many more.
The point of this metaphor is that the same way each body part has to maintain its function in order to keep the whole body alive and working properly, <u>each member of the society needs to continue operating at a satisfying level and maintain their function without complaining so that Rome could flourish. </u>
In <em>very simple words</em>, gerunds are nouns (that end in -ing). As nouns, they can function as subjects and objects depending on their position in the sentence.
