696 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
leave to posterity. 1 At the end of some manuscripts are found 
the following verses: 
Ci fineray mon dit, je Jehande Mehun, 
Que je por Testament laiz a tout le commun. 
Car je n’ai pas avoir por lassier a chascun, 
Si pregne ci leur part li autre et li un. 
The Codicil attached to this document also concerns itself 
with morals. 2 
§5. When the testator happened to be a ruler or was inter¬ 
ested in the government, the advice given in the will was apt to 
take a political turn and become advice to his successors or to his 
prince. 3 We have already seen how one division of the will 
of Augustus (14 A. D.) concerned itself with instructions to 
successors. 4 $o also The Testament of Philippe Auguste 
(1223) was nothing other than an ordinance for the adminis¬ 
tration of the interior, 5 6 7 
In the Testament as literature we are not surprise to find a 
parallel tendency One of the earliest examples of this is The 
Testament of our Lord* This was written in Greek about 400 
A. D., possibly in Syria or Asia Minor. It was translated into 
Syriac by James,of Edessa in the seventh century. It is from 
this translation that the book is known to us. It professes to 
be the Last Will and Testament of Jesus, given to his disciples 
as a guide to the management of the church and its services. 5 
1 The idea of leaving one’s writings as a legacy goes back to a con¬ 
siderable degree of antiquity. “Orpheus vero carmen illud, quod ut 
apologetae veteres significant, quasi mortalium operum postremum 
Musaeo suo hereditatis loco relinquere constituit, AiaOjjxa? inscripsit.” 
(C. A. Lobeck. Aglaophamus, 1829, I, 366.) Later examples are num¬ 
erous. The Last Will and Testament of Valentin , a treatise on metals, 
is, according to the preface of the English translation of 1671, a legacy 
left to posterity by the half mythical Mediaeval alchemist. Cf. also 
pages 479, 494. 
2 For other examples of testaments in which moral advice occur see 
pages 468 ff. 
3 Since the Political Testament in its later development became a 
type so distinct from the Literary Testament with which this paper 
is more directly concerned, it is thought best to trace in this connec¬ 
tion the later as well as the earlier history of the form. 
4 See page 440. 
s Nouveau Larousse, ed. Claude Augne, Paris, 1904, p. 977. 
6 See translation by A. J. MacLean, Edinburgh, 1902. 
7 For its use of the word testament (SiaQr/urj) see in this study 
pages 463 ff. The word is here used in the same sense in which it was 
first applied to the Old and New Testaments. It also carries with it 
something of the idea of the Will. 
