156 Gyg e ring in Plato and Nizami. [No. 2, 
might send monthly tidings of the flocks to the king, and he too 
came . with the rest, weaving his ring. As he was sitting with the 
others, he happened to turn the bezel* of the ring inside towards 
the palm of his hand, when he immediately became invisible to those 
who sat near, and they began to talk of him as gone away. He 
of course wondered at this, and began again to twist the ring and 
turn the bezel outwards, and when he turned it, he became visible. 
Having observed this incident, he made experiments with the ring 
whether it really had this power, and he found it always happen so, 
■ — if he turned the bezel inwards, he became invisible, but he was 
visible again, if he turned it outwards. Having made this discovery, 
he next contrived to become one of the messengers to the king. On 
his arrival, he corrupted the queen, and plotting with her attacked 
the king and killed him and seized his throne.” 
There can be no doubt that Nizami derived his story from the 
Republic, — the only question is, by what channel did it come to him ? 
It is well known that Honain and his sons (towards the end of the 
ninth century) were the chief translators of Greek authors into 
Arabic. Dr. Schmolders says,t “ On trouve cites assez frequemment 
dans les auteurs arabes plusieurs dialogues de Platon, notamment le 
Cratgle et le PJuedon, mais aueun de ces livres n’est mieux connu 
d’eux que son grand ouvrage sur les lois.” Some of Iionain’s trans- 
lations seem still extant, and Casiri in his Bibliotheca Arabico-His- 
panica quotes from an Arabic author a list of the translations of 
Honain and Jahia ben Adi, and among them is “ Politicorum Liber 
ab Honaino Isaaci filio Arabice conversus” (vol. I. p. 302). 
In this way Nizami most probably gained his knowledge of Gyo-es, 
and he has appropriately put the fable into Plato’s own mouth. If, 
however, he had really read the Republic even in the baldest transla- 
tion, he is inexcusable for not having attempted some faint approach 
to dramatic propriety when he introduced Socrates also into the 
assembly. The character, whose ‘ photograph’ has been preserved to 
us with such marvellous distinctness in the page of Plato, retains 
not even an outline resemblance in that of Nizami, and one can 
hardly believe that the Persian poet ever read more than the second 
* Cicero (De Off. iii.) translates it * pala annuli.’ 
t Essai sur les ecoles philosopliiques cliez les Arabes, p. 93. 
