875 



SYNTIPAS. 



SYRIANUS. 



876 



the story of the young prince betrayed by his counsellor into the 

 hands of the Qhoulo, as told in the ' Arabian Nights.' The Ghoule is 

 a Lamia in this version, and the young man cries to Christ instead 

 of Mohammed. The third counsellor relates how two tribt-s were 

 involved in war for a vessel of honey. He also tells how a certain 

 woman, going to buy rice, was offered sugar with it, gratis, on con- 

 dition of certain complaisances to the vendor. While she is within 

 the house, the shop-boy empties the sugar from the bag and fills it 

 with dust. When this is discovered by her husband, she pretends 

 that, having dropped the money, she gathered up the dust, hoping to 

 discover in it what she had lost. The husband helps to sift the dust, 

 and so says the malicious narrator, " defiled his own beard." The 

 queen hereupon relates how a prince on his way to his bride was 

 decoyed by his father's vizir to drink of a fountain which changed him 

 into a woman. A traveller whom he meets, hearing his miserable 

 story, consents to exchange sexes with him, on condition of a restoration 

 within a certain time. At the time fixed however, the transformed 

 woman informs the prince she is pregnant, and he, pleading the 

 injustice of taking upon himself this additional burden, refuses to com- 

 plete his agreement. The fourth philosopher then tells a story of a 

 bathkeeper giving up his wife to a young prince, in the false hope of 

 obtaining profit without dishonour. The same sage tells another 

 story, of a man leaving his wife, each taking to the other an oath of 

 perfect fidelity during their separation. Towards the end of this 

 term, a young man seeing the wife becomes enamoured of her, and 

 seeks to be introduced to her through the intervention of an old 

 woman in the neighbourhood. This latter persuades the wife to grant 

 her employer a meeting, by a story of her daughter having been turned 

 into a black bitch for her cruelty to a lover. The old woman going out 

 to seek her employer is unable to find him, but brings with her the first 

 man she meets, who proves to be the absent husband. The point of 

 the story is in the readiness with which the wife vindicates herself, 

 and puts her husband in the position of the injuring party, by repre- 

 senting the whole occurrence as a trap laid to try his fidelity. The 

 queen tells a foolish story of a wild boar, who, looking up in vain for 

 the figs which he expected an ape to throw down to him, burst the 

 arteries of his neck and was killed. The story of the fifth sage is that 

 of the hound slaying the serpent in defence of his master's child, of 

 which we have a current European version in the legend of ' Beth 

 Gllert.' He tells also another story of an old woman who procures 

 the expulsion of. a wife from her husband's house by laying a man's 

 cloak, known to the husband, under his couch ; and afterwards con- 

 trives to restore the wife by professing to have left the cloak there by 

 forgetfulness. The queen then tells the story of a thief coming into 

 an inn by night to steal the travellers' mules, aud finding there a lion 

 which had come for the same purpose, and which he mistook for a 

 mule and mounted. The lion, taking this man for the "guardian daemon 

 of the night," is terrified, and suffers him to keep his place quietly till 

 the morning, when the man escapes into a tree. A monkey meeting 

 the lion, asks the cause of his terror, and assuring him that the sup- 

 posed daemon is a man, persuades him to return to the tree to kill him. 

 The lion consents ; but the thief contriving to kill the monkey in the 

 tree, the lion, still more terrified than before, takes a precipitate flight. 



The two doves is a story told by the same sage, as a warning against 

 hasty judgments. They had gathered a provision of corn for the 

 winter, which being wet shrank in drying. The malo dove, seeing this, 

 accused his mate of having clandestinely robbed the store, and on her 

 denial of this charge killed her. When the rains C'itne, and the grain 

 swelled to its original size, he discovered his error, and too late 

 repented of it. This is one of the fables of the Kalilah wa Dimna, or 

 Arabic version of the Pancha Tantra, but is not found in the Hitopo- 

 desa, the later Indian version. The story of the woman into whose 

 basket had been introduced a honey cake elephant is much of the 

 same stamp as that of the woman buying rice (already quoted), but is 

 hardly decent enough for quotation. The same judgment may be 

 passed on the man with three wishes, a satire on the vanity of 

 human desires which has been repeated in a hundred different 

 forms. The next story is also one of those malicious yet favourite 

 jests of which every nation has a copy. A certain scholar has occupied 

 himself, like the husband of the Wife of Bath, in collecting the wiles 

 of women ; of the folly of which attempt the wife of his host con- 

 vinces him by a story and a practical exemplification. 



At this point the prince, whose days of trial are accomplished, 

 breaks silence, and explains the perfidy of his stepmother. This, 

 though the end of his danger, is not the end of the story. A question 

 arises, who of all the parties concerned would have been in fault if 

 the prince had been put to death. The blame is successively cast 

 upon every one of the actors in the story, when the prince, premising 

 that his knowledge, compared with that of the sage, is "but as a fly 

 to an elephant," begs permission to relate an apologue. A certain 

 man made a feast, where among other viands there was milk for the 

 guests' drinking. Now as the maid-servant hud brought this from 

 the market on her head, a bird with a serpent in its claws had flown 

 over it, and the serpent in its agony disgorged its poison into the 

 vessel. The guests all drank and died, and the question is raised, 

 who was blameable ? The prince gives it as his opinion that blame 

 rests upon no one agent concerned, but that the death of the guests 

 was th result of destiny, and applies the same judgment to the hypo- 



thetical case of his own condemnation and execution. There are then 

 told three stories : two of the wit of children, and one of the simpli- 

 city of an old man. The first of these is of a child who by his 

 extravagant and petulant hunger laid a train for reproving his mother's 

 lover ; the second the well-known story of the three men who put 

 their money into the hands of a woman, charging her to return it to 

 the three only. One of these contrives to obtain possession of the 

 money by fraud ; and when the other two claim from her their 

 deposit, by the advice of a child she holds them to the words of their 

 bargain, that she was not to deliver up the money except to three; 

 she cannot therefore give it, till the third, the thief, shall appear. 

 The third story is of a merchant selling aromatic woods, who unhap- 

 pily enters a certain city where the inhabitants all pique themselves 

 upon their knavery. One of these, lighting a fire of aromatic wood*, 

 persuades the merchant that they are in that city so cheap as to be 

 commonly used for fuel, and induces him to part with his whole stock 

 at a low rate, for a small coffer full he does not say of what. A 

 little after this notable bargain, our merchant chances upon a com- 

 pany of these knaves, and is challenged by one of them to a trial of 

 wit, the loser to be subject to the command of the elder. The 

 merchant is beaten, as may be supposed, aud is enjoined by the victor 

 to drink up the waters of the sea an old quibble. Putting off the 

 execution of this arduous duty till the morrow, he is assailed by 

 another knave, a one-eyed worthy, who insists that the merchant, 

 grey-eyed like himself, has stolen his missing optic, and drags him 

 before the judge. On his way he is met by his hostess, who engages 

 for his re-appearance and takes him home. After a feminine lecture 

 to him for slighting her advice, for she had warned him of the cha- 

 racter of her fellow-townsmen, she informs him that an old man holds 

 a sort of school of knavery, whither the townspeople resort to receive 

 his judgment upon their day's proceedings; and she advised him to 

 be present there in disguise. Acting upon this suggestion, he hoars 

 his three friends severally recount their adventures, and the archmime 

 blames each of them in turn : the first, because he might be required 

 by the merchant to fill the stipulated measure with fleas, half male and 

 half female, part blue-eyed and part dark; the second, because the 

 merchant might if he pleased refuse to drink up the sea unless the 

 rivers kept from, flowing into it ; and the third, because he has left 

 himself open to an embarrassing deinaud from the merchant, in case 

 the latter should think of requiring that the eyes of each party should 

 be taken out and weighed, to determine the ownership of the disputed 

 one. Acting upon these hints, the merchant obtains the full value 

 for his merchandise, and makes besides his own terms with his 

 tormentors. 



The punishment of the queen is then debated on, one proposing 

 that her hands and feet should be cut off, another that her tongue be 

 cut out, another that her heart be torn from her body. The unhappy 

 woman pleads for herself by the story of a fox which was shut up by 

 accident in a walled city, and, finding no egress, lay counterfeiting 

 death at the closed gate of the city. One passer by dilates on the 

 great virtues of a fox's tail for "sponging mules ; " another lauds the 

 virtues of its ears for stopping the crying of a fretful child ; a third 

 declared that the teeth of a fox are " the sovran'st thing on earth " for 

 a fit of the tooth-ache ; and each appropriates to himself the parti- 

 cular part he has eulogised. All this, says our heroiue, the fox bore 

 manfully ; but wheu a fourth sage declared that a fox's heart was a 

 remedy for all evils, and took out his knive to possess himself of this 

 panacea, the patient took heart of grace ; and, leaping up, escaped 

 safely by the gate, which had by this time been opened. The queen's 

 moral from all this is, that she would bear patiently either of the pro- 

 posed minor punishments ; but that the tearing out of her heart was 

 a " death of all deaths most bitter." Her step-son pleads for mercy, 

 on the ground of the weakness of the sex ; and her punishment is 

 commuted to shaving her head, branding her on the forehead, and 

 parading her on an ass's back out of the city. A story to show the 

 uselessness of resisting the decrees of Providence, like a thousand and 

 one stories of the same kind, some of which our readers will remember 

 as given in the ' Arabian Nights,' is the last in the book, and this is 

 closed by a description of the prince's education, and of his examina- 

 tion by his father. 



The Greek text of Syntipas was edited from two Paris manuscripts 

 by Boiasonade : ' ^wrliras, De Syntipa et Cyri filio Andreopuli 

 narratio,' Paris, 8vo, 1828. A translation of Syntipas into modern 

 Greek appeared at Venice in 1805. Another work attributed to 

 Syntipas was also translated into Greek from the Syriac by Amlivo- 

 pulus. It is a collection of sixty-two fables, entitled ' napaSfiypaTi- 

 Kol \6yoi,' and was edited by Matthia;, Leipzig, 8vo, 1781. 



SYRIA'NUS, a Greek philosopher, born at Alexandria or at Gaza, 

 was the leader of the school of New Platonists at Athens, next after 

 its founder Plutarch, the son of Nestoriu?. He died iu the year 

 A.D. 450. His works, the greater number of which are lost, are 

 enumerated by Suidas. They are 1, 'A Commentary on Homer,' 

 in seven books ; 2, ' On the Republic of Plato ; ' 3, 'On the Theology 

 of Orpheus;' 4, 'On the Gods of Homer;' 5, 'On the Harmony of 

 Orpheus, Pythagoras, aud Plato ; ' 6, ' Ten Books on the Oracles.' 

 The two following works are extant : 7, 'A Commentary on some 

 parts of Aristotle's Metaphysics;' and, 8, 'A Commentary on the 

 Rhetoric of Hermogenes.' 



