As well as elucidating cultural references and points of language, these notes aim to highlight some of the differences between the Middle English Seven Sages in A and the other versions of the Seven Sages materials in English and in other languages. Our focus falls most intensively on the other Middle English texts: Ar, B, C, D, E, F, R. We cite these texts as they appear either as the base texts or in lists of variants in the editions by Brunner, Campbell, and Whitelock (in the case of Ar, B, and E we give line numbers only where Brunner edits these texts in parallel; otherwise variants in these three witnesses can be traced in Brunner by Auchinleck line number). We also regularly consider the French prose text from which the Middle English texts derive, A*, as well as a Welsh A-text (Aw), the French verse text (K), and an English (He) and a Scots (Hs) version of the H-text. We give selected variants from L and M, whose closest relationship is with A*; from D*, whose closest relation is K; and from S. Where they share material with the Seven Sages, we refer to the Dolopathos (Do) and to the extant texts of the Book of Sindbad that we have been able to consult in translation (SindA101, SindA1001, SindSyr, SindGr, SindSp, SindHeb, SindP1, SindP2, SindP3). Our notes relating A to other renditions of the Seven Sages are intended to demonstrate the variety with which these materials have been handled; they do not pretend to offer an exhaustive account of the variety that characterizes the Seven Sages tradition. We hope that readers of this edition will be encouraged to embark on their own comparative studies.

Prologue

The first five hundred lines of the Seven Sages establish the context in which the ensuing story-telling contest will be conducted. The empress will tell tales designed to incite her husband to execute his son, to which the sages will respond with tales aiming to assuage or redirect the imperial ire. The poem’s audience is made privy to the fallacious nature of the empress’s claim that the prince tried to rape her. Here we see her attempting to seduce the young prince and, when she fails, fabricating evidence of an attack (419–82). A limited perspective on the empress’s motivation is afforded by a passage in which we see her being goaded into action by one of her husband’s courtiers (239–46). The silence of the prince in the face of the empress’s accusations is more thoroughly explained. He has seen in the stars that his survival will require him to remain dumb for the first seven days after his return to his father’s court (323–86). The prince’s taciturnity stokes tension in anticipation of the eighth day, when he will speak in his own defense; at the same time, it necessitates the intervention of the sages on the prince’s behalf in the intervening period.

The setting of the action at Rome is emphasized. We find ourselves at the court of the emperor Diocletian (E3–8), in the company of the famous Roman pedagogue Cato (E73–88), and in a hall that is constructed on the banks of the river Tiber (151–56). This location provides uncertain grounds for the ensuing trial. The poem delights in clerical wisdom and pedagogic theory where it depicts the construction of the ideal school and the year-by-year progress of a model student (151–208). But the dignity of the sages is undermined by the ungainly competition in which they bid to become the prince’s tutor (E27–A126), by a potential flaw in their curriculum (see the Explanatory Note to lines 168–82, below), and by the odd test that they set to measure the effectiveness of their instruction (183–204). The barons advising Diocletian are likewise tricky figures. If they are correct to caution against hasty action in the face of the empress’s accusations (494–504), it is nevertheless these same men who insist that the widowed emperor should remarry (211–33). This decision is at the root of the dynastic struggle that ensues.

The prince’s silence at his father’s court is open to a variety of interpretations. It recalls the monastic vow of silence, a connection that is made patent in the Dolopathos, whose Cistercian author, Johannes de Alta Silva, has the frame narrative end with the conversion of the prince and his people to Christianity (Do, pp. 81–96). The prince’s taciturnity might also be seen to embody his rejection of courtly sociability in favor of the life of the mind into which the sages have inducted him. In this case, the restoration of the prince’s speech can be seen to coincide with the attainment of his readiness to rule. Psychoanalytic readings point out that the breaking of the incest taboo that the empress attempts coincides with the silence of its victim. In this regard, the Seven Sages contrasts with another text in its orbit, the Life of Secundus, in which the mutism of the hero follows, rather than precedes, an incestuous encounter.

Special attention is given to the empress’s simulation of an attempted rape in the Introduction. This and much else in the frame of the Seven Sages is taken over from the Book of Sindbad. There the story concerns a prince who is long wished for by his father, the king, but who is slow to learn until he reaches the threshold of adulthood. When his tutor, Sindbad, is finally successful, he is commanded to return the prince to court so that his progress can be checked. Sindbad sees in the stars that danger will result if the prince speaks and he accordingly instructs him to remain silent for seven days. At court, the prince is given to one of his father’s concubines, who promises to break his silence, and who proposes to the prince in private that together they seize power. Outraged, the prince forgets Sindbad’s interdiction and reprimands the concubine, who proceeds to simulate a rape. The king is furious and commands his son’s execution, but this vengeance is delayed by a storytelling competition. The father’s counsellors tell tales about the dangers of hasty action and the wiles of wicked women while the concubine tells tales about unreliable sons and counsellors.

This is the outline of a narrative shared by the extant texts of the Book of Sindbad. Some versions have dedicatory material allowing for their more precise situation and sketching out a genealogy of the text (SindGr, pp. 2–5; SindSp, p. 15; SindP1, pp. 15–28; SindP2, pp. 5–8). Other variants concern the name of the tutor, who is also called Sindban (SindSyr), Syntipas (SindGr), Sindibad (SindSp), or Sendebar (SindHeb); the location of the action, which can be set in Persia (SindGr, pp. 2–5), Judea (SindSp, p. 15), or India (SindHeb, pp. 44–45; SindP1, p. 27; SindP2, p. 7; SindP3, p. 56); and the treatment of the prince’s vow of silence: sometimes the prince does not break his vow (SindHeb, pp. 82–85; SindP3, p. 58) and in one instance he breaks it to ask how his father might be killed (SindP2, p. 25). In some versions the storytelling begins before the accusation of the concubine (SindA101, SindP1, SindP2) and sometimes there is a competition between the sages before the prince is given or returned to Sindbad for instruction (SindA101, pp. 216–21; SindHeb, pp. 62–71; SindSp, pp. 17–18). Only the version of the prologue in SindA1001 differs broadly from the summary just given. There the boy is not slow to learn; Sindbad tells the king about the necessity of the prince’s silence; and the prince is sent to a pavilion to be entertained by his father’s slave girls for seven days. There, one of the slaves importunes the prince, which prompts his reprimand and her simulation of a rape (SindA1001, 2:546–47).

When the Book of Sindbad travels westward, its preliminary materials undergo a series of alterations. Most significantly, the eastern locations of the story are effaced in favor of Rome, Constantinople (in K and D*), or Sicily (in Do). Where eastern elements are included — such as the name Malquydras, which is given to one of the sages (see the Explanatory Note to lines E61–62, below) — these have been drawn from a repertoire of medieval European stereotypes and re-imposed on a thoroughly westernized text. The organization and dramatis personae of the trial are also altered. With one exception (SindP3), in the Book of Sindbad, the tales told by the king’s counsellors precede the tales told by his concubine and the counsellors tell two tales each, whereas the concubine tells just one. In the Seven Sages, the concubine is replaced by the emperor’s second wife; both parties tell one tale per exchange; and the empress speaks first. It might be debated whether this alteration works for or against the accusing woman, who is rendered at once more aggressive and more powerful in the Seven Sages. In SindP3 and the Dolopathos, the frame narrative undergoes a different set of adaptations. There the seven tales are all told by wise men counselling the prosecution of the empress; in these versions, the empress has no tales of her own.

The frame narrative is constructed differently across the extant versions of the Seven Sages. Variants cluster around the introduction of the story matter, for which some versions imagine an oral performance; the identities given to the emperor and the empress; the description of the prince’s education, in which the Middle English texts take special interest; the motivations and actions ascribed to the stepmother; and the nature of the misogynist commentary offered in the text, which is sometimes more developed in the Middle English versions than in their source.

Further reading

The Seven Sages of Rome is unusual among medieval romances insofar as it applies to learning and scholarship the critical attention that the genre more typically dedicates to chivalry. See Foehr-Janssens, Le temps des fables, esp. pp. 13–18. The contrast between the training of the hero in the Seven Sages and in Arthurian romances is highlighted by Cosman, The Education of the Hero, pp. 147–52. On the equivocal depiction of learning and scholarship in the Seven Sages, see Foehr-Janssens, “La trahison des sages”; and Speer, “Recycling the Seven Sages”; and contrast Colliot, “La mauvaise vieillesse,” who argues that negative assessments of the sages are appropriate only later in the Seven Sages cycle of romances.

On baronial counsel in the Seven Sages, see Barnes, Counsel and Strategy, pp. 116–20. On the prince’s silence, see Foehr-Janssens, “L’Art de ne rien dire”; and Speer, “The Prince’s Baptism.” For the Life of Secundus, see Secundus the Silent Philosopher, ed. and trans. Perry.

On the transformation of the Book of Sindbad in medieval Europe, see Belcher, “The Diffusion of the Book of Sindbād”; Critten, “Sodomy and the East”; Foehr-Janssens, “Le désir et le savoir,” “De Jérusalem à Rome,” and “Misogyny and the Trends”; and Ziolkowski, “Vergil as Shahrazad.”

Tale 1: arbor, the tree. The empress.

In her first tale, the empress broaches a theme to which she will return repeatedly: usurpation. From her perspective, the story’s meaning is clear. The grand, old pine tree represents the emperor; the shoot is his son; and the success of the shoot at the expense of the old tree shows what will happen to the emperor unless he acts (611–19). This interpretation is complicated by the presence of the citizen of Rome, the burgeis, whom the empress does not account for. The burgess who fosters the shoot and orders the gradual destruction of the old tree also has something of the emperor insofar as he can be accused of favoring novelties in the form of his new wife over his longer-term commitments to his son and to his lineage. Two analogues of arbor direct the reader’s sympathies to the young tree, suggesting that in the Seven Sages the tale has been adapted to suit the empress’s argument.

Arbor is included in all the versions of the Seven Sages. The main variant readings concern the rank of the man in whose garden the tale is set; the properties of the tree and the genesis of the shoot; the outcome of the gardener’s interventions; and the empress’s moralization. On the recycling of the motif of the beloved tree in tentamina, see the headnote to that tale, below.

Further reading

On the sympathies for the empress that might be generated in arbor, see Foehr-Janssens, “Quand les bêtes se taisent.” On the tale’s analogues, see Krappe, “Studies [2].”

Tale 2: canis, the dog. First sage, Bancillas.

The sages begin their defense of the prince with a tale about the unreliability of women’s advice. In canis, the central character’s mistake is said to result from his willingness to act upon his wife’s counsel; if the emperor has his son killed on the empress’s advice, he will suffer the same shame as did the knight in the tale on account of his erroneous canicide (837–42). The tale is well-chosen insofar as the knight’s treatment of his dog appears to acknowledge the conflicting feelings that fathers can have regarding their succession at the same time as it adumbrates the happy outcome of the emperor’s conflict with his son. Other aspects of the tale are harder to recruit to the sages’ rhetorical purpose. In particular, the knight’s extravagant mourning at the close of the tale recalls his characterization in other versions of canis as a figure lacking in self-control. In its long history, canis has more often been told as a warning against hastiness than as a demonstration of the dangers of women’s counsel.

Canis was a popular story throughout the premodern east and west; it is included in all the versions of the Seven Sages, the Dolopathos, and all the versions of the Book of Sindbad except SindA1001 and SindP3. In the Book of Sindbad, the story treats the fate of a well-trained dog who defends his master’s baby from an attack by a viper when both the master and his wife are away from home (the mother has gone to visit her relatives, and he has been called to attend the king at short notice). When the father returns, he sees the dog covered in blood and kills it, assuming that the animal has either killed or eaten the baby (SindA101, pp. 254–57; SindSyr, pp. 116–17; SindGr, pp. 74–79; SindSp, p. 33; SindHeb, pp. 164–69). In the Persian versions, the mother has died since giving birth and it is a cat who saves the child and suffers the consequences of the father’s hasty action (SindP1, pp. 119–23; SindP2, pp. 56–58). In all the versions of the tale transmitted in the Book of Sindbad, the story is told as a warning against hasty action.

The main variant readings amongst the versions of canis transmitted in the Seven Sages concern the nature of the moral and the insistence with which it is propounded. The Middle English versions, A* (9.1–11.21), He (pp. 28–31), and Hs (405–501), agree in presenting the tale as a warning against acting on women’s testimony and following women’s advice, but they make this claim with varying degrees of insistence. K (1165–1398) and Do (pp. 40–42) moralize the story as a warning against haste. Other variant readings concern the backgrounding and order of the narrative; the age of the greyhound; the gender of the snake; and the treatment of the knight’s self-exile. On the recycling of the motif of the beloved dog in tentamina, see the headnote to that tale, below. For a brief discussion of canis, see the Introduction, pp. 14–15.

Further reading

Canis has attracted an unusual volume of critical interest amongst scholars who frequently take the tale as a test case for the kinds of reading that the Seven Sages anticipates. On the forms that canis assumes in K and Do, see Speer, “Specularity in a Formulaic Frame Romance” and “The Prodigal Knight.” On the mixed feelings regarding succession that the tale explores, see Foehr-Janssens, “Le chien, la femme et le petit enfant” and “Quand les bêtes se taisent.” On the knight’s extravagant mourning, see Ho, “Framed Progeny.” For the argument that the tale provokes fresh reflection on the importance of animal lives, see Steel, “Ridiculous Mourning” and How Not to Make a Human, pp. 17–40. On the interdependence of humans and animals in the tale, see too Foehr-Janssens, “Le chien, l’enfant et le serpent.” On the long history of the tale’s transmission from east to west, see Blackburn, “The Brahmin and the Mongoose”; and Eichel-Lojkine, “Canis dans tous ses états.” On the analogues of canis, see too Campbell, pp. lxxix–lxxxii; and Krappe, “Studies [3].”

Tale 3: aper, the boar. The empress.

The empress responds to canis with a lesson on the dangerous allure of storytelling. The moral that she draws is clear: like the herdsman who calms the boar before killing him, the sages seek to lull the emperor with their tales in preparation for a mortal attack of their own (926–32). But the parallel between the emperor and the boar might also shed a light on the frame narrative that is less helpful for the empress’s purpose. The boar in aper is not an innocent victim; it inspires fear across a whole region (871–73) and is capable of terrifying displays of anger (896–E903). Diocletian is likewise prone to fits of rage. Earlier in the day, during a fractious conversation with the sage who tells canis, the emperor adds to the punishments that he is planning for his son, saying that he will be drawn as well as hanged (667–68). The shepherd boy’s youth and vulnerability invite comparison with the situation of the prince, and so aper might also be read as an allegory of the emperor’s tyrannical and potentially self-destructive assault on his son.

Aper is included in all the versions of the Seven Sages and in all the versions of the Book of Sindbad except SindA1001 and SindP3. In the Book of Sindbad, the story concerns a monkey and either a boar or a pig. In some versions, the concubine invites the prince’s father to see the monkey as a stand-in for the sages. In that case, the boar or pig arrives at a fig tree in which the monkey is sitting; the monkey throws down one or more figs; and the creature kills itself by straining its neck upwards for more fruit (SindA101, pp. 254–55; SindSp, p. 32; SindGr, pp. 72–75). SindHeb (pp. 204–07) follows this pattern but has a man in the tree instead of the monkey: he has climbed up there in his flight from the boar. SindSyr (p. 116) also belongs in this group, but the animal is a sow. In the two Persian versions the concubine presents the monkey as a stand-in for herself. Here the monkey has retired from the world, either to pursue a life of prayer or for fear of becoming a burden on its family. Fleeing his enemies, the boar strays onto the monkey’s patch and is fed from the tree by the monkey, either until the monkey accuses the boar of being an ungrateful guest or until there are no more figs. The boar then kills himself in the process of attacking the tree (SindP1, pp. 131–38; SindP2, pp. 59–60).

The main variant readings amongst the versions of aper transmitted in the Seven Sages concern its geographical location; the motivation of the herdsman; and the nature of the empress’s moral.

Further reading

On the various versions of aper, see Campbell, pp. lxxxii–lxxxiv, and Krappe, “Studies [1].”

Tale 4: Medicus, the doctor. Second sage, Ancilles.

The second sage intends his tale to underline the unprofitability of competition with one’s natural successors: by killing his nephew and burning his books, Ypocras deprives himself of two routes to healing that he might have tried had he let his apprentice live (1145–68). Like gaza and vii sapientes, which are told by the empress, medicus is a tale in which scholars come off poorly. The tale also raises the specter of the unnatural child in the form of the king of Hungary’s illegitimate son. The nephew’s treatment of the Hungarian prince (1037–87) risks recalling the empress’s claim that Diocletian’s son is illegitimate (477) when the sages would have the emperor’s attention focused elsewhere. Also counter to their purposes is the characterization of Ypocras’s nephew, who is tricky. When his uncle stops teaching him, the nephew finishes his education by spying on his guardian (1011–14).

For medieval readers, the criticism that accrues to Ypocras in the tale might recall the doctor’s presentation as a dupe of women in the Arthurian romances. In the Estoire del saint Graal, Hippocrates is humiliated first by a woman who flirts with him but then leaves him hanging in a basket from her window, then by his own wife, who poisons him. Campbell (p. 160) suggests a distant link between the first part of medicus and a story according to which Hippocrates discovers from external signs that an illness of Perdiccas II, king of Macedonia, was caused by the king having fallen in love with his father’s concubine. Campbell (p. 161n1086) also notes as inspiration for the tale a fable relating Hippocrates’s burning of his books at Kos, where he was librarian, in order to conceal the use that he had made of them in his own writings. In the Arthurian tradition and in the Seven Sages, the value of the book learning that wise men might wield can never entirely escape doubt.

Medicus is included in all the versions of the Seven Sages. A* stands apart from the others where it lacks lines describing Ypocras’s early envy of his nephew and identifying the doctor’s dysentery as his punishment for killing the boy (compare, e.g., A1018, A1119–22, A1148–56). In K, the tale’s stages are ordered differently. K lacks the description of the nephew’s apprenticeship, beginning instead with the story of the adulterous queen’s son, which K situates in Greece (1707–56). Ypocras is afflicted with dysentery and performs the barrel trick for his friends before he kills his nephew (K1783–1804); there is also a discussion of an enigmatic dictum that is the only doctrine Ypocras will transmit to his students (K1805–28). Other variant readings across the extant versions concern the nephew’s apprenticeship; the diagnosis of the son born out of wedlock; the treatment of Ypocras’s barrel trick; and the scope of the sage’s concluding moral.

Further reading

On the negative depiction of book learning in medicus, see Foehr-Janssens, “La trahison des sages” and Speer, “Recycling the Seven Sages.” On the Arthurian background to the tale, see Foehr-Janssens, “Arthur et les sept sages.” On Ypocras as an avatar of the emperor, see Foehr-Janssens, “La parole condensée.” On the representation of Hippocrates in Arthurian romance, see Nicolas, “Fabrique du personnage.” For a Middle English translation of the Estoire, see Lovelich, The History of the Holy Grail, ed. Furnivall and Kempe; on Hippocrates, see chapters 35–37. On the sources and analogues of medicus, see Campbell, pp. lxxxiv–lxxxv; and Krappe, “Studies [1]” and “Studies [3].” On a possible link between this tale and the tale of Yunan and Duban in the Thousand and One Nights, see Mallette, “Narration and Silence.”

Tale 5: gaza, the treasure. The empress.

Like medicus and vii sapientes, gaza is a tale in which sages come off poorly. It is also a tale whose total implications appear to escape its teller. The connection that the empress intends her husband to draw between the behavior of the thieving sage in gaza and his own sages is made patent where she identifies him as one of a group of seven sages at the court of the emperor Octavian (1227–34). She also impugns the prince’s loyalty to his father: unless the emperor acts, she concludes, his son will be just as quick to chop off his father’s head and throw it in a privy as was the son in the tale (1348–50). But the empress’s moral sits uneasily with her story insofar as the father in gaza repeatedly commands his own decapitation (1288–89; 1297–98). By killing him, the son performs an act of obedience that is ordered to save not only himself but also his family (1292–96). Indeed, the empress seems rather to be clutching at straws when she reserves her principal objection for the way the son disposes of the head rather than the beheading per se (1339–45). Such is the gap between the tale and the empress’s purpose that some readers find the match of teller to tale in this instance to be deliberately designed to discredit her.

Gaza was a popular story in antiquity and in the Middle Ages; it is included in all the extant versions of the Seven Sages and in the Dolopathos. Some part of the empress’s difficulty may derive from the pliability of the tale; in the Dolopathos, it is told as an example of the propensity of appearances to deceive by one of the sages contesting the empress’s rape accusation (Do, pp. 43–50). The main variant readings across the extant versions concern the identity of the father; the backgrounding of the narrative, and the character of the son, whose eagerness to engage in the theft and to decapitate his father varies.

Further reading

On the disjunction between the empress’s moral and her tale, see Bahr, Fragments and Assemblages, p. 132 and Ho, “Framed Progenies.” For the argument that gaza is given to the empress to discredit her, see Speer, “Translatio as Inventio.” On the transmission of gaza, see Paris, “Le conte du trésor du roi Rhampsinite,” which finds the earliest extant rendition of the tale in Herodotus. On the tale’s analogues, see too Campbell, pp. lxxxv–xc. On the far eastern career of the story, see Matsubara, “Chinese and Japanese Versions of Gaza,” and “Une version japonaise de Gaza.”

Tale 6: puteus, the well. Third sage, Lentilioun.

The sages’ third tale is presented as an example of feminine deceit: if the emperor kills his son on the advice of his wife, he will have been betrayed by his wife in the same way as was the husband in the story (1516–20). Nevertheless, sympathies might accrue to the tale’s ostensible villain. The opening puts the husband in the wrong where his snobbish rejection of his neighbors’ children is described (1403–08); the marriage agreement is also said to be struck between the husband and his wife’s father, further alleviating the wife of responsibility for the union’s failure (1410–12). Sympathy for the wife in the tale might extend to sympathy for the empress, whose marriage is likewise arranged (227–30). Like tentamina and inclusa, puteus is a tale in which wives might be less damnable than the sages imply.

Puteus is included in all the extant versions of the Seven Sages and in the Dolopathos, where it is combined with inclusa (Do, pp. 78–79). There the wife is kept in a tower, escapes to visit a lover, and is locked out, but can switch places with her husband thanks to the well trick. Instead of leaving the husband outside to be discovered by the town guard, in this version, the wife lets him back in after he has promised to stop locking her up. The main variants in the telling of the story in the Seven Sages concern the identity of the male protagonist; the arrangement of the couple’s marriage; the wife’s relationship to her suitor; and the conditions that allow for the husband’s discovery of his wife’s infidelity.

Further reading

On the transmission of puteus beyond the Seven Sages, including mention of Molière’s George Dandin, which reworks the tale’s faked suicide, see Campbell, pp. xc–xci. On the curfew mentioned in many versions of the story, see Hilka, “Zum Roman des Sept Sages.”

Tale 7: senescalcus, the steward. The empress.

The empress uses her fourth tale to present a new argument. If the emperor loses his power, he will be driven from his own country as is the steward in her story; her own losses will be smaller, she says, because she will be free to remarry, as was the steward’s wife (1651–58). While there is a long tradition of portraying stewards as morally tricky characters, the empress’s lesson sits oddly with the tale because there has been no suggestion that the emperor shares this steward’s covetousness; it also shows the empress somewhat indecorously making plans for a life without her current husband. The empress’s attribution of sodomitical tendencies to the king at the opening of the tale may likewise reflect unfavorably upon her given that in medieval romances such accusations are often revealed to be malicious and fallacious. The fourteenth century has been interpreted as a moment where attitudes towards male homosexuality begin to harden and, as this happens, homosexual desires are increasingly projected onto foreign others — here the Italians of Apulia and Calabria.

Some part of the interpretative challenge that the tale and its moralization pose may derive from a mismatch between the tale and its teller. In the Book of Sindbad, where scholarship refers to the tale under the title balneator (the bath attendant), senescalcus is told by one of the father’s counsellors as a warning against acting in haste (SindA101, pp. 246–49; SindGr, pp. 58–63; SindSp, pp. 29–30; SindA1001, 2:562–63), or as an example of the fickleness of women’s affections (SindP1, pp. 139–43), or their wiles (SindHeb, pp. 208–19). It may be that in the Seven Sages the empress is given senescalcus to tell as part of a deliberate attempt to discredit her. But it should be emphasized that in the Book of Sindbad the tale is not a perfect fit for the counsellors either. In SindGr (pp. 62–63) and SindA1001 (2:563), the wife does not always enjoy the attentions of the prince and additional blame accrues to the husband for disrespecting his spouse.

Senescalcus is found in all the versions of the Seven Sages consulted for this edition except F. It is found in all the extant versions of the Book of Sindbad except SindSyr, where the manuscript is damaged, and SindP3. It is left untranslated in the text that we have consulted for SindP2 (p. 61n1), apparently on account of its risqué plot. In the Book of Sindbad, the sodomy motif is absent. There, a bathkeeper who has questioned the virility of a fat prince is charged by the prince with finding him a prostitute to have sex with. Assuming that the prince is impotent and wishing to pocket the prostitute’s fee, the bathkeeper sends his own wife to the prince. The plot backfires when the prince proves himself eminently capable of sex, and the bathkeeper hangs himself, or throws himself off the bathhouse, in shame.

Regarding the king’s sexuality and his illness there is considerable variance across the versions of senescalcus compiled in the Seven Sages; two of the Middle English texts appear to have been altered to straighten the story (see the Explanatory Note to lines 1553–54, below). In He (pp. 99–106), senescalcus is conflated with Roma. In this version, the king who unwittingly procures sex with the steward’s wife is the same person as the king who attacks Rome and is routed by the sages’ tricks. The other main variants across the versions of senescalcus transmitted in the Seven Sages concern the description of the relationship between the king and the steward; the fates of the steward and his wife; and the moral. Gower appears to have known one of the A-text renditions of senescalcus, which he retells in Confessio amantis 5.2643–2825 (The English Works, ed. Macaulay, 2:19–24).

Further reading

On the mismatch of the tale to the teller, see Speer, “What Ails the Sodomite King of Egypt?” On the king in senescalcus as an avatar of Diocletian, see Foehr-Janssens, “La parole condensée.” On fallacious and malicious accusations of sodomy as a motif in medieval romance, see Burgwinkle, Sodomy, Masculinity, and Law, p. 90. On the varying treatment of the sodomitical ruler in the Seven Sages tradition, see Critten, “Sodomy and the East.” On male homosexuality more generally, and for the thesis that the fourteenth century sees a hardening of attitudes towards male homosexuality, see Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Boswell’s arguments have not found universal acceptance; see too the review essay by Kuefler, “Homoeroticism in Antiquity and the Middle Ages”). For a survey of romance stewards, see Hazell, “‘Trewe Man’ or ‘Wicke Traitour?’.” On the conjoining of senescalcus and Roma in the H-text, see Foehr-Janssens, L’Histoire des sept sages, pp. 32–37; and Runte, “From the Vernacular to Latin and Back.” On Gower’s use of senescalcus, see Gower, The English Works, ed. Macaulay, 2:496n2643ff. On the tale’s analogues, see too Campbell, pp. xci–xciii.

Tale 8: tentamina, the tests. Fourth sage, Malquidras.

The sages’ fourth tale is a story of a wicked wife with a difference. In this instance, the old husband’s intervention stops the adultery that his young spouse is planning and apparently succeeds in taming her desires. For this reason, the moral drawn in A feels rather weak: if the emperor kills his son on his wife’s advice, the sage says, a worse fate will befall him than befell the old husband in the tale (1927–32). As is the case in inclusa and puteus, some sympathy may accrue to the wife in this tale. The situation of the wife in tentamina recalls that of the malmariée, or unhappy wife, of medieval romance. She is trapped in a loveless marriage to a man much older than herself, who is both unresponsive to her attempts to attract his attention and cruel in his punishment of her. It is also significant that two of the wife’s tests allow her to strike out at love objects introduced elsewhere in the collection that attracted inordinate male affection: the little tree in arbor and the dog in canis. The targeting of the little tree and the dog in tentamina reminds us of the propensity of men throughout the poem to neglect their wives.

Tentamina is found in all the extant versions of the Seven Sages. A version of the story is also included as one of the examples in the Mesnagier de Paris, a manual of advice written by an elderly husband for his younger wife; the Mesnagier cites the Seven Sages as the source of the anecdote. The major point of difference between the versions of tentamina told in the Seven Sages tradition concerns the psychology of desire that underlies the mother’s advice to her daughter. In the northern and southern texts, except F, the mother’s logic runs that, by angering her elderly husband, her daughter will reignite his libido (e.g., A1811–12; A1829–30). The other versions either have the mother suggest that her daughter should test the old man’s quickness to punish before embarking on an affair (A*, Aw, D, He, Hs, S) or propose that she might wear him down with her continued assaults (F, K). Further important variants concern the husband’s prehistory; the wife’s reliance on her mother and willingness to challenge her; the husband’s reactions to the tests; and the sage’s moral.

Further reading

For sympathetic readings of the wife’s predicament in tentamina, see Ho, “Framed Progenies”; and Critten “Hating Women.” On the husband in the tale as an avatar of the emperor, see Foehr-Janssens, “La parole condensée.” The recurrence of the little tree and the dog in the tale has led to the suggestion that the story was written specially for this collection. See Foehr-Janssens, “Le désir et le savoir” and “Misogyny and the Trends.” On the tale’s analogues, see Campbell, pp. xciii–xciv. For the Mesnagier, see The Good Wife’s Guide, trans. Greco and Rose; tentamina analogue at pp. 132–36. On the use of the Seven Sages in the Mesnagier, see Brereton, “Deux sources.”

Tale 9: Virgilius, Virgil. The empress.

The Roman poet Virgil (70 BCE–19 BCE) is now remembered principally as the author of the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the Aeneid. Over the course of the Middle Ages, a series of legends attached to this figure that represented him as a magician. Three of these legends are included in the empress’s fifth tale, where the poet is credited with making i) a fire for the poor at Rome that is overseen by an archer statue (1957–72); ii) two more statues at Rome’s east and west gates that throw a golden ball between them (1986–96); and iii) a mirror alerting the Romans to the movements of their enemies (1998–2008). This last Virgilian contraption was perhaps the best known to medieval audiences; to catalogers of Virgilian legend it is known as the salvatio Romae, or the salvation of Rome. He (pp. 82–84) and Hs (1643–76) offer descriptions of the salvatio that are closest to the canonical accounts in which the machine is said to comprise a series of figures representative of the Roman provinces; when one of the provinces is plotting to rebel, the relevant figure rings a bell.

Notwithstanding the time she takes describing the Virgilian marvels, for the empress, the moral of the tale is that wise men flatter and lie in pursuit of their own aims (2145–50). Crassus is painted as another figure who falls foul of false stories (1945–47); in this regard, he reproduces the error of the boar in aper. Virgilius is also paralleled by the empress’s other stories about deceitful wise men: gaza, vii sapientes, and Roma. But it differs from these tales insofar as Virgil offers a positive example of a clerk whose knowledge is turned to the public good. Virgil’s marvels are either useful or delightful and those who destroy them are clearly in the wrong. The significance of the narrative is thus more complicated than the empress suggests. Virgilius teaches us not to reject clerks and learning outright but that it is important to distinguish between applications of learning as either profitable or dangerous.

Virgilius is found in all the extant versions of the Seven Sages except F. The main variants among the extant versions of the Seven Sages concern the description of the two Virgilian marvels; the involvement of the people of Rome in the story; and the moral. A version of the story of Virgil’s mirror is also told by Gower in Confessio amantis 5.2031–224 (The English Works, ed. Macaulay, 2:3–8).

Further reading

For an overview of the legendary afterlife of Virgil in the Middle Ages as well as an anthology of legendary texts, see The Virgilian Tradition, ed. Ziolkowski and Putnam, pp. 825–1024. On the relationship of Virgilius to the legendary tradition, see Spargo, Virgil the Necromancer, pp. 29–31, 60–68; and Campbell, pp. xciv–xcvii. On the eastern debts of the tradition, see Krappe, “Studies [4].” On Gower’s use of Virgilius, see Gower, The English Works, ed. Macaulay, 2:495. Virgil assumes a more central role in the Dolopathos, where he is the sole tutor of the accused prince and where he is shown to play a crucial role in the preparation of the Roman world for the coming of Christianity. On the poet’s incarnation in that text, see Pifarré, “Le personnage de Virgile.”

Tale 10: avis, the bird. Fifth sage, Catoun.

The sages’ fifth tale allows for a demonstration of two of their favorite arguments: hasty action should be avoided, and women are habitually tricky. The moralization highlights both these ideas. Reading the magpie as an avatar of the prince, the sage points out that the unjust murder of the magpie might have been avoided if the husband had taken counsel and that the wife’s plotting against the magpie is like the empress’s plotting against the prince (2291–96). If the prince is killed on the empress’s advice, the sage concludes, the emperor will be wracked with regret as was the husband in the tale (2297–2302).

The tale was liable to attract alternative readings, however, not least because there was a strong association in medieval minds between women and magpies. In an Anglo-Norman poem written down contemporaneously with the Auchinleck copy of the Seven Sages, for example, women are said to be like magpies on account of their delight in ornament as well as their tendencies towards trickery, pride, scolding, spying, vindictiveness, secrecy, and chatter. The potentially double significance of the bird in avis is especially clear in A, where the magpie is referred to by both masculine and feminine pronouns (see further the Explanatory Note to line 2206, below). Any association between the magpie and the empress complicates the tale’s moral considerably because this magpie tells the truth (2209–10; 2289–90).

If the magpie has something of the empress as well as the prince, then the tale might encourage consideration of the similarities between these characters’ experiences in the frame narrative. While the prince is his father’s literal captive, the tale teaches us to see that the empress might also be constrained, or caged, as the bird is here (2204). Her situation as a woman married to an older man recalls the malmariée of medieval romance (on which, see the headnote for tentamina, above). The power structures that the empress must negotiate also shape her actions. There is no reason to disbelieve her when she claims at the close of the text that she was motivated in her desire to destroy the prince by a fear of losing her position at court (E3519–25).

The story of the tell-tale bird was well known in the Middle Ages; other versions in Middle English include those told by Gower in Confessio amantis 3.768–817 (The English Works, ed. Macaulay, 1:246–48) and Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales (IX[H]105–362). In both those story-collections, the fate of the bird is presented as a lesson on the importance of keeping one’s counsel. Avis is found in all the extant versions of the Seven Sages except Aw. It is also included in all the versions of the Book of Sindbad except SindP3. In the Book of Sindbad, the story concerns a husband who has a parrot that he sets to spy on his wife during his travels. When the wife meets a lover at home, the parrot reports back and the wife is repudiated. The wife at first suspects her servant of revealing her secret but the servant tells her it was the parrot, and together they simulate a storm one night so that the bird will give a false account of the weather to the husband in the morning. The plan works and the husband assumes that the parrot has been lying all along, kills the bird, and reconciles with the wife. The story is told as an example of the dangers of haste as well as of the wiles of evil women (SindA101, pp. 228–31; SindSyr, pp. 105–06; SindGr, pp. 24–31; SindHeb, pp. 102–11; SindSp, pp. 22–23; SindA1001, 2:549–50).

There are some interesting variants amongst the versions of the tale compiled in the Book of Sindbad. In SindA101, the husband is shown teaching the bird to speak and setting it free at the end of the story; and in SindA1001, the wife is subsequently rediscovered in her adultery and killed. The Persian versions have a slightly longer tale. First the husband departs, the wife spends the night with her lover, the parrot reports, and the husband beats her; then the husband departs again, the wife and the servant perform the trick, the parrot relates the storm and is killed, and a neighbor questions the husband’s judgment: since birds cannot lie, the neighbor says, the husband should press the servant to discover the truth. The servant reveals the trick and the husband regrets his error (SindP1, pp. 71–81; SindP2, pp. 31–35).

The main variants between the versions of avis as it appears in the Seven Sages concern the characterization of the magpie; the wife’s reasons for taking a lover; the identity of her helper; the tale’s conclusion; the moral; and the density of misogynist commentary with which the tale is infused.

Further reading

On the magpie as a representative of the empress in avis, see Foehr-Janssens, “Quand les bêtes se taisent”; and Critten, “Hating Women.” For an edition and translation of the Anglo-Norman poem “Femmes a la pye” (“Women and Magpies”), see The Complete Harley 2253 Manuscript, ed. and trans. Fein, 3:124–29. For a collection of tell-tale bird stories, including eastern analogues of avis, see Clouston, “The Tell-Tale Bird.” More recently, including an assessment of Chaucer’s possible debts to the Seven Sages, see Wheatley, “The Manciple’s Tale.” On the tale’s analogues, see too Campbell, pp. xcvii–xcix.

Tale 11: vii sapientes, the seven wise men. The empress.

In Geoffrey of Monmouth’s influential History of the Kings of Britain (ca. 1140), the British king Vortigern is advised to build a tower to defend himself against invading Saxons but whenever foundations are laid, they are swallowed up by the earth on which they stand. Vortigern’s magicians advise him that the building materials should be fortified with the blood of a fatherless child and the search which follows results in the discovery of Merlin, whose anonymous paternity comes to light in an overheard dispute between the boy and one of his peers. Merlin escapes death by showing Vortigern the true reason for his failing construction: beneath the land chosen for the stronghold lies a pond under which there are two sleeping dragons. The pond is drained and the two dragons emerge and fight.

The empress’s sixth tale adapts the Arthurian story of Vortigern’s tower so as to furnish a further example of deceptive wise men. Several key elements from the story are taken over, including the pernicious advisors, the character of the child Merlin, and the subterranean source of the emperor’s predicament. At the same time, the story-matter is domesticated — the action in vii sapientes takes place in the emperor’s bedchamber, not on the battlefield — and the scene is moved to Rome. The empress fits the tale to her broader argument. The similarity between Diocletian and the ruler in the tale is highlighted at the outset — both emperors are advised by seven wise men (2333–34) — and the moral makes the empress’s understanding of this parallel patent. Just as the overweening magicians in the tale blinded their master through their machinations, she says, so the sages in the frame narrative are clouding her husband’s judgment (2511–14).

Some aspects of vii sapientes evade the empress’s moral and risk undermining her position. Most obviously, the tale implicitly aligns the empress with the tricky figure of Merlin, who liberates Vortigern from the grip of his bad advisors. Merlin is a morally ambiguous figure throughout Arthurian literature, not least because his conception was said to have resulted from an encounter between his mother and an incubus. The tale’s intertextual connections also complicate its meaning. In the History of the Kings of Britain, after interpreting the battle between the dragons, Merlin goes on to forecast the downfall of Vortigern at the hands of his rivals. For audiences of vii sapientes who were aware of this connection, the bigger context in which the tower story fits invites doubt regarding both the security of Diocletian’s position and the loyalties of his wife and son. For Merlin might also be read as a representative of the prince. Like Merlin, the emperor’s son is precocious in his learning and, although he is not fatherless, risks disinheritance and murder at his father’s hands.

The tale of vii sapientes is included in all the versions of the Seven Sages of Rome. The main variants concern the condition of the emperor at the opening of the tale and the nature of his affliction; the discovery of the child who heals the emperor; and the conclusion of the tale and its moral. The story of Vortigern’s tower was well known in medieval England thanks to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s history and the translations and adaptations that it inspired, including the Middle English romance Of Arthour and of Merlin, which is compiled with the Seven Sages of Rome in the Auchinleck Manuscript. The similarity of the descriptions that these texts give of the sages’ discovery of Merlin is marked. See Of Arthour and of Merlin, ed. Macrae-Gibson, lines 1195–1208. The version of the Vortigern’s tower story told in vii sapientes appears to have influenced subsequent Arthurian literature in a fashion that belies the traditional distinction between the matters of Rome and Britain.

Further reading

On vii sapientes as a skeptical comment on the value of clerical wisdom, see Foehr-Janssens, “La trahison des sages”; and Speer, “Recycling the Seven Sages.” On the ruler in the tale as an avatar of Diocletian, see Foehr-Janssens, “La parole condensée.” On the overlap between the matters of Rome and Britain in vii sapientes, see Foehr-Janssens, “Arthur et les sept sages.” On the Celtic and Germanic analogues of the story, see Krappe, “Note sur un épisode de l’Historia Britonum”; and Paton, “The Story of Vortigern’s Tower.” On the adaptation of the story in the Seven Sages, see too Campbell, pp. 175–76n2635f; Campbell, “The Source of the Story of Sapientes”; Foehr-Janssens, “Misogyny and the Trends,” and “Le désir et le savoir”; and Krappe, “Studies [1],” and “Studies [4].” For Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account of Vortigern’s tower and Merlin’s conception, see The History of the Kings of Britain, ed. Reeve, pp. 136–44.

Tale 12: vidua, the widow. Sixth sage, Gesse.

The sages’ sixth tale reprises the popular story of the Matron of Ephesus with the aim once again of discrediting the emperor’s wife and women more generally (2547–48). (Since the sage’s name is not given in the lead-up to the tale, we give it from the Prologue (E91), where the sixth sage is named Gesse). At the close of vidua, the same fate is wished upon the emperor as befell the husband in the tale should the emperor kill his son (2717–20). That fate is worse than the outcome described in the classical iteration of the plot by Petronius in his Satyricon (ca. 50 BCE); there the narrative misses the mutilation of the husband’s corpse. In vidua, after hanging her own husband’s body, the wife wounds him and knocks out his teeth so that he better resembles the thief whose place he is taking (2657–2704). Some versions visit further indignities upon the corpse (see Explanatory Note to line 2704, below). Petronius’s text also lacks the attempt at moral clarity that characterizes vidua. In the Satyricon we are told that some of the people who hear the tale laugh, a woman blushes, and only one man draws a harsher moral: “Lichas was not amused, shook his head angrily and said: ‘If the governor had been a just man, he would have put the husband’s body back in the tomb and attached the woman to the cross.’” See Petronius: Satyricon, ed. and trans. Schmeling, p. 317.

In the Middle Ages, too, the Matron of Ephesus could be treated more lightly. The fabliau of La dolonte qui fu fotue sur la tonbe (The Mourner Who Got Fucked at the Grave Site) is an analogous treatment of the theme in which some grudging credit accrues to the wife for finding satisfaction with the knight. If the meaning of the story in the Seven Sages is not completely controlled by the sages’ moral, its resonances with the frame narrative might likewise generate sympathy for the empress, who at the outset of the poem renounces her old husband in favor of a newcomer, his son. When contrasted with the overwrought emotionality of the husband and the hypocrisy of the knight, the pragmatism of the wife in vidua may strike readers as the least objectionable of the qualities displayed in the tale.

Vidua is included in all the versions of the Seven Sages of Rome except Hs. The main variants concern the description of the relationship between the husband and wife and the manner of her injury; the mutilations visited upon the corpse; the conclusion and moralization of the tale; and the density of misogynist commentary.

Further reading

On the tale’s early analogues, see Campbell, pp. ci–cviii. For a longer reception history, see Ure, “The Widow of Ephesus.” For an edition and lively Modern English translation of La dolonte qui fu fotue sur la tonbe, see The Fabliaux, trans. Dubin, pp. 324–31. On this fabliau rendition of the Matron of Ephesus story, see Foehr-Janssens, “Mourir d’aimer.” On the generic affiliation of the tale and its moralization in vidua, see Critten, “Hating Women.”

Tale 13: Roma, Rome. The empress.

In her final tale, the empress returns to her claim that Diocletian’s wise men are deceivers. In Roma, she shows how a sage in an elaborate disguise strikes fear into seven heathen armies and enables the inhabitants of Rome to break a long siege that has confined them; the moral that she draws is that her husband’s sages will deceive and subjugate him similarly (E2820–25). The obvious problem with this deployment of the tale is that in Roma, the costumed sage is defending Rome, Diocletian’s own town, from a formidable enemy. The text identifies this hostile force as saresonys, or Saracens (E2806). This term was used by Europeans to refer to the Muslims met in the Holy Land in the context of the crusades; the descriptions that it enabled were often so extravagantly exoticizing and bear so little relation to what is now known about actual medieval Muslims that modern scholars now use the term only to refer to medieval European representations of these people. Since the term is so loaded with racist meaning some recent researchers argue that its use even in this narrow sense should be avoided.

By virtue of its form as a framed narrative, the Seven Sages affords an unusual opportunity for reconsideration of what saresonys might be. Anyone pursuing the empress’s logic must at least momentarily weigh up the commensurability of the besieging forces and Diocletian’s own Romans; in effect, the empress asks her audience to take sides against Rome. It takes an effort of the mind to fault the empress, and individual readers might vary in their haste to condemn her reasoning. The inclusion of a Muslim element at this juncture appears to have been deliberate, because it does not characterize the analogous versions of the story in the De Divisionibus temporum attributed to Bede (ca. 673–735 CE) and in Philippe de Thaon’s Comput (ca. 1113 CE). In contrast to the general trend in the Seven Sages to obscure the eastern origins of the story collection (on which see the Introduction, p. 3), here it appears that an eastern element has been imported.

Roma is included in all the versions of the Seven Sages of Rome except Hs, L, and S. The tale remains stable across the extant versions; the main variants concern the sage’s eventual reward and the moralization of the tale. In He (pp. 99–106), Roma is conjoined with Senescalcus, so that the king who sleeps with the steward’s wife is identical with the king besieging Rome. See further the headnote to Senescalcus, above. In Aw (pp. 652–53), where Roma is told by one of the sages, the tale treats a different story of siege at an eastern town. When the oppressing forces offer to depart in return for the sages who have opposed them, the sages dissuade their fellow citizens from handing them over by telling them a story about a wolf, a shepherd, and his dogs. The wolf had promised to leave the shepherd in peace if the shepherd gave the dogs over to him. But when the shepherd complied, the wolf slaughtered both him and his flock. The citizens of the town are persuaded to keep the sages and, with the sages’ help, they finally defeat their besiegers.

Further reading

On the significance of the term “Saracen,” with particular reference to the texts of the Auchinleck Manuscript, see Calkin, Saracens and the Making of English Identity, pp. 1–12; and, more recently, Rajabzadeh, “The Depoliticized Saracen.” On the tale’s Islamophobia, see Critten, “Sodomy and the East.” On the sources and analogues of Roma, see Campbell, pp. cviii–cix; Krappe, “Studies [3]”; and Paris, “Le récit Roma dans les Sept Sages.” On the treatment of Roma in Aw, see Gadsden, “Chwedleu Seith Doethon Rufein.”

Tale 14: inclusa, the recluse. Seventh sage, Maxencyon.

The sages’ final story is moralized as an example of the dangers that come from trusting one’s wife’s words over the evidence that one has before one’s own eyes (E3214–17). The moral suits the story insofar as the husband in inclusa misses the abduction of his wife as it takes place under his very nose. But the enclosed wife in the tale, in fact, says relatively little. The main agent in the deception of the husband — at least in this version of the story — is not the recluse but the knight who sets out to find her after seeing her in a dream. Any attempt to present this story as another example of the wiles of women seems destined to be at least a partial failure. What is more, the husband’s treatment of his wife and her own questioning of his treatment of her (E3019–23) seems more likely to provoke sympathy for the heroine than condemnation. In this respect, inclusa joins puteus and tentamina as a tale told by the sages in which men’s treatment of women might attract censure.

Inclusa was a well-known tale in the Middle Ages. It is included in all the versions of the Seven Sages of Rome except L and S. In the Dolopathos it is combined with puteus. See further the headnote to that tale, above. Two texts attempt to repair the mismatch between the moral and the tale described above. In the midland version, the wife becomes the agent of her own abduction: she plans the ring trick and then instructs the knight in the method he will use to take her away. In He, the tale switches tellers. There the empress tells the story as another example of deceit amongst royal servants: the husband is a king and the knight who abducts his wife has previously been made his steward; He (p. 119) also devotes some time to a reflection from the queen on the difficult situation in which the affair has placed her. Other important variants amongst the extant texts concern the geography of the tale; the outcomes for the mason and the husband; the commentary that accompanies the tale; and the moralization.

Further reading

On the propensity of inclusa to elicit sympathy for the wife, see Foehr-Janssens, “Une recluse fort (peu) courtoise”; and Critten, “Hating Women.” On the changing of the tale’s teller in the H-texts, see Foehr-Janssens, L’Histoire des sept sages, pp. 38–41; and Runte, “From the Vernacular to Latin and Back.” On the transmission of inclusa and its analogues, see Campbell, pp. cix–cxii; Hilka, “Die Wanderung der Erzählung von der Inclusa”; and Krappe, “Studies [5].”

Tale 15: vaticinium, the prophesy. The prince.

When the prince finally speaks on the eighth day of his trial, he prefaces his response to the empress’s accusations with a tale of his own. His argument differs from that of his masters, who in their stories and moralizations have insisted on the unreliability of women in general and the empress in particular. Instead, the prince’s tale features examples of filial helpfulness and forgiveness that hold out to the emperor the possibility of a positive outcome to their shared ordeal. In vaticinium, the prince draws a parallel between his experience and the career of the boy in the tale, who is cast out by his father but who makes good, thanks to his obedience and intelligence. These are the qualities that win him the love and respect first of his adoptive father (E3336–37), then of the king and the barons for whom he interprets the crying of three crows (E3426–31). In his moralization, the prince reproaches his father for throwing him into prison but stresses his loyalty to him notwithstanding this harsh treatment (E3494–3503). This is how the prince responds to the empress’s recurring claim that unchecked sons will usurp their fathers’ power prematurely.

The crows’ debate and its resolution complicate the prince’s argument insofar as the judgment in favor of the more recently arrived bird (E3410–17) invites reconsideration of the empress’s condition as the newest member in the family constituted primarily by the emperor and his son. More crucially, the prince leaves the resolution of his tale hanging. It is unclear at the end of vaticinium whether the boy who is by this point king will forgive his father for his transgression or insist upon his punishment (E3482–85). Thus, vaticinium engages without resolving two of the key themes running throughout the Seven Sages: the management of succession and the correct interpretation of speech.

Regarding the tale’s treatment of succession, it has been observed that vaticinium returns to the story of Joseph, which also provides the Potiphar’s wife motif deployed at the opening of the frame narrative (on which see the Introduction, pp. 15–16). In Genesis 37, Joseph recounts a dream that he interprets as proof that he will surpass his father and his brothers and is cast out by his brothers. In vaticinium, the story is adapted so that the envy motivating Joseph’s treatment becomes paternal. Regarding the tale’s interest in acts of interpretation, the species of the birds involved is potentially telling because there was a long tradition associating crows with poets and the pitfalls of poetry. In Chaucer’s Manciple’s Tale, for example, the crow loses his song as a punishment for telling tales on his master’s wife (CT X[H]292–308). On Chaucer’s possible familiarity with avis, which tells a similar story, see Wheatley, “The Manciple’s Tale.”

Vaticinium is included in all the versions of the Seven Sages except L. The main variants are of crucial importance to interpretations of the tale, because they relate to the interpretation of the crows’ debate and the tale’s conclusion. In He and Hs, the crows are fighting over custody of the third crow, their son (see the Explanatory Note to lines E3376–78, below). Regarding the conclusion, E is unusual in not describing a moment of resolution between father and son. Also of note is a lengthy interpolation of a version of the Amis and Amiloun story in the He text of vaticinium. Other points of difference include the age of the child and the involvement of the barons in the king’s decision making.

Further reading

On the significance of the prince’s returning speech, see Foehr-Janssens, “L’Art de ne rien dire”; and Speer, “The Prince’s Baptism.” On the tale’s handling of the theme of succession, see Allen, “Episodes”; and Foehr-Janssens, “Le désir et le savoir.” On the significance of bird speech in the tale, see Foehr-Janssens, “Quand les bêtes se taisent.” On the interpolation of the Amis and Amiloun story in the H-text, see Foehr-Janssens, L’Histoire des sept sages, pp. 41–47. On the tale’s debts to the Joseph story and its analogues more broadly, see Campbell, p. cxii-cxiv; and Krappe, “Studies [2].”

Conclusion

The extant copies of the Seven Sages conclude the frame narrative differently. The variants recorded below cluster around the empress’s defense; the events occurring prior to her execution; and the resolution of the story. The Book of Sindbad also varies in its final stages. In SindA101 (pp. 280–81) and SindHeb (pp. 294–95), the concubine is pardoned; in SindA1001 (2:610), she is banished; in SindGr (pp. 174–77) and SindP1 (p. 262), she keeps her life but has her head shaved and is ridden through town in infamy; and in SindSp (p. 51) and SindP3 (p. 68), she is executed. In two versions, manuscript damage obscures the passage describing her fate (SindSyr, SindP2). In several versions, the prince’s accuser is given another story in which she compares herself to a fox trapped in a city by night. The fox plays dead during the day and must suffer various parts of its body to be cut off by the townspeople for various uses until someone attempts to excise the animal’s heart, at which the fox jumps up and flees through the town gates, which have been opened for the new day. Like the fox, the concubine says, she can suffer everything apart from having her heart torn out (SindGr, pp. 170–75; SindHeb, pp. 288–93; SindP1, pp. 259–62).

On the eighth day of the trial in Do (pp. 77–96), Virgil flies in on a giant bird, denounces the queen, tells his version of puteus (on which see the headnote to that tale, above), and announces that Lucinius should not have been tried because he was mute. Lucinius is released and tells his story, the queen is burned, and then the deaths of Dolopathos and Virgil are narrated. Lucinius becomes ruler of Sicily, converts to Christianity after a lengthy exchange with a visiting missionary, abdicates, and finally departs on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Further reading

Kunkel, “Misogyny, Wisdom, and Legal Practice” and Reynders, “How Lonely Are Women[?]” offer comparative readings of texts in the Seven Sages tradition that focus in part on the frame narrative’s differing conclusions.

The textual notes record differences between the text of this edition and the corresponding manuscript texts on which it is based (A and E). These notes also include a record of visual features in the manuscripts (rubrication, penwork initials, paragraph signs) and of our editorial emendations, which have been made for sense or to correct clear errors. We do not record here codicological and paratextual features, such as catchwords, signatures, and marginalia. Nor do we provide here a record of variants between the Middle English texts, for which readers are directed to the editions by Brunner, Campbell, and Whitelock.