THE SEVEN

WISE MASTERS  , a cycle of stories of Oriental origin . A Roman emperor causes his son to be educated away from the court in the seven liberal arts by seven wise masters . On his return to court his stepmother the empress seeks to seduce him . To avert some danger presaged by the stars he is bound over to a week's silence . During this time the empress accuses him to her husband, and seeks to bring about his death by seven stories which she relates to the emperor; but her narrative is each time confuted by tales of the craft of women related by the sages . Finally the prince's lips are unsealed, the truth exposed, and the wicked empress is executed . The cycle of stories, which appears in many European languages, is of Eastern origin . An analogous collection occurs in Sanskrit, but the Indian original is unknown . Travelling from the east by way of Arabic, Persian, Syriac and Greek, it was known as the book of Sindibad, and was translated from Greek into Latin in the 1 zth century by Jean, de Hauteseille (Joannes de Alta Silva), a monk of the abbey of Haute-Seille near Toul, with the title of Dolopathos (ed . H . Oesterley, Strassburg, 1893) . This was translated into French about 1210 by a trouvere named Herbers as Li Romans di Dolopathos; another French version, Li Romans des Sept sages, was based on a different Latin original .

The

German, English, French and Spanish chap-books of the cycle are generally based on a Latin original differing from these . Three metrical romances probably based on the French, and dating from the 14th century, exist in English . The most important of these is The Sevyn Sages by John Rolland of Dalkeith edited for the Bannatyne Club (Edinburgh, 1837) . ' The Latin romance was frequently printed in the 15th century, and Wynkyn de W at-de printed an English version about 1515 . See G . Paris, Deux Redactions du roman des sept sages de Rome (Paris, 1876, Soc. des. anc. textes fr.) ; Buchner, Historia septem sapientium . (Erlangen, 1889) ; K . Campbell, A Study of the Romance of the Seven Sages with special reference to the middle English versions (Baltimore, 1898); D . Comparetti, Researches respecting the Book of Sindibdd (Folk-Lore Soc., 1882) .