Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 1.djvu/17

Rh the female sex, and the danger of a condemnation without proof. Several other collections compiled in this manner originated in India, and were taken thence into the Arabic language, and brought, through the Arabs and Jews, into Western Europe. The story of Sendabad was translated into Latin early in the thirteenth century by a monk of the Abbey of Haute Selve, in the bishopric of Nancy, in France, who is believed to have taken his version from the Hebrew, under the title of Historia Septem Sapientum Romæ, the History of the Seven Sages of Rome, and it soon became extremely popular in Western Europe, and was translated into French verse and into English verse.

The eastern form given to these collections of tales was thus introduced and became popular in Europe, and soon found imitators. I need hardly say that the most remarkable of