152 
[No. 2, 
Ggges’ ring in Plato and Nizami. 
from the pretended authority under which they come.* In Nizami, 
it is only in Plato’s discourse that we find anything like personal 
identity — and it is singular that he is represented as telling this very 
legend of Gyges and his ring, and that in such a detailed manner 
that it can he nothing but a direct translation from the Republic 
itself. 
To prove this identity of the two accounts, we subjoin a literal 
translation of each. 
The Persian episode commences with an account of a dispute for 
supremacy between Plato and Aristotle, which is at length settled 
by the former inventing a peculiar kind of musical instrument, which 
the latter is completely baffled to explain. 
When the next day the world-illumining morning 
Triumphantly turned night to day, 
The rose of the sun’s flaming fountain burst forth, 
And night plunged into the sea like a fish. 
The crown-bearing king sat on a throne of gold, 
With a jewel-laden girdle round his waist, 
All the wise men sat beneath the throne, 
And Aflatdn’s seat was higher than all. 
The king, since the sage had learned that magic strain, 
Wondered more and more how he had learned it ; 
And he asked him, “ Oh thou world-experienced old man, 
Who hast brought from thy soul secrets of the unseen world, 
The key to the lock of knowledge thou, 
Knowledge comes forth from thy counsel. 
Say, hast thou read, of all the wise of earth 
Has there ever been one whose hand reached higher than thine ? 
Has any invention ever risen from this workshop, 
To which thy genius could not find the way ?” 
Aflatiin first uttered the full voice of praise, 
And then said, “ Yonder turquoise circle 
Can weave in better wise its enchantments 
Than that human wit can detect the way thereto. 
* Even the so-called extracts from Plato in the Akhlaki Jalali are only 
commonplace moral observations, with no trace of anything Platonic tp charac- 
terize them. 
