"The figure of the philosopher Sinbad, rendered in Greek as Syntipas, was introduced into the Byzantine literary tradition in the late eleventh century through two works translated from Syriac into Greek by Michael Andreopoulos. Both of these works, The Book of Syntipas the Philosopher (BSP) and a collection of sixty-two fables (Fables), are contained in this volume. Taken together, the BSP and Fables represent the character and the wisdom of Syntipas as they would become known to Byzantine readers. Although Andreopoulos translated both texts in the Middle Ages, they are distantly related to earlier Greek traditions as old as the fourth century BCE and, more immediately, to a complex development of medieval wisdom literature written in Persian, Arabic, and Syriac. The BSP and Fables made their way into Greek by different paths, but once united by Andreopoulos's translations, they were probably assumed to belong together. Of the three oldest manuscripts that form the basis of our Greek texts, two transmitboth the story of Syntipas and the fables that were attributed to him"--
The Byzantine Sinbad collects
The Book of Syntipas the Philosopher, originally a Persian story, and the sixty-two tales of
The Fables of Syntipas—both translated from Syriac in the late eleventh century by Michael Andreopoulos. This volume is the first English translation to include these texts alongside the Byzantine Greek originals.
The Byzantine Sinbad collects The Book of Syntipas the Philosopher and The Fables of Syntipas, both translated from Syriac in the late eleventh century by the scholar Michael Andreopoulos.
Originally written in Persian and part of a multilingual and multicultural medieval storytelling tradition, The Book of Syntipas recounts how the Persian king Cyrus’s unnamed son—a student of the fictional philosopher Sinbad, who is known in Greek as Syntipas—is falsely accused of rape by a royal concubine. While the young man awaits execution, seven philosophers and the concubine attempt to influence Cyrus’s judgment. After seven days of storytelling, the son is exonerated and demonstrates the wisdom he learned from Syntipas.
The sixty-two moral tales in The Fables of Syntipas are inspired mainly by the tradition of Aesop but include fifteen that are uniquely attributed to the philosopher.
This volume is the first English translation to bring together Andreopoulos’s Byzantine Greek texts.
