Sindibad / Seven Sages is a framed corpus of stories of men’s sexed protest. In the frame tale, a king threatens to execute his son when the queen falsely accuses this prince of sexual assault. A wise man or seven sages defend the prince when he is silenced. Justice ultimate prevails when the queen’s false accusation is clearly refuted. The Sindibad / Seven Sages corpus originated in Sanskrit in India more than 2000 years ago. By about 800 years ago, it had diffused into Persian, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Latin, and European vernaculars. The corpus goes by various names: Book of Sindibad / Sindbad, Sendebar, The Fables of Syntipas, the Book of the Philosopher Syntipas, Dolopathos, History of the Seven Wise Masters {Historia Septem Sapientium}, Compendium of Seven Sages {Recueil des Sept Sages}, and the Romance of the Seven Sages of Rome {Roman des sept sages de Rome}. Uniting this corpus is the important theme of men’s vulnerability to women’s false accusations of sexual offenses.
In various versions of the Book of Sindibad, sages instruct the king with stories of scholars’ futile attempts to compile the wiles of women. … Read the post guile and wiles of women impossible to compile
The seven sages of Greece and Rome were typically persons shrouded in obscurity, not prominent, well-known ancient thinkers. … Read the post seven sages of Greece and Rome
The medieval Hebrew book Sefer Shaashuim includes a tale about how a war started. A related medieval text provides similar folk wisdom about war. … Read the post Sefer Shaashuim provides folk wisdom on how wars start
False accusations of rape, prevalent in historical world literature, provide insight into human sociality and communication across millennia. … Read the post false accusations of rape in world literature
A mosiac buried at Pompeii depicts seven sages classically dressed. It may indicate controversy between oral instruction and learning from scrolls. … Read the post seven sages: context of the Socratic method