Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 1.djvu/16

xii to have been composed at a period not far distant from the beginning of the Christian era: and one of the later was the larger collection so well known as the Thousand and One Nights, or, as it is called in the English version, the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. It was in fact, like the other, known to Europe in the Middle Ages through the Arabic version. The first of these was known to the Hindoos in its Sanscrit form under the title of Sendabad. It found its way into Greece, where it appeared in a Greek version under the title of Syntipas; and it appeared among the Mediæval Jews in their Hebrew as the romance of Sendabar. Its plot is a simple one. A young prince is falsely accused by one of the wives of the king his father of having made a violent attempt upon her virtue, but he is defended by seven sages, or philosophers, who tell a series of stories calculated to expose the malice and perversity of