The Book of Sindbad the Philosopher, rendered Syntipas in Greek, was translated into learned Byzantine Greek in the late 11th century by Michael Andreopoulos in eastern Asia Minor. Andreopoulos translated the text from the Syriac version, which in its turn was a translation of the 9th-century Arabic translation of a Persian original. In the 13th century, Andreopoulos’ text was rewritten in a slightly less ‘elevated’ linguistic register, termed ‘Retractatio’ or 'Metaphrasis' in scholarship. From the late 16th century onwards translations into lower linguistic registers begin to appear; these are known as the Vernacular or Post-Byzantine versions of the text. The Greek Syntipas has come down to us in 25 manuscripts, as well as in numerous chapbooks printed in Venice and Athens (for which see Kechayoglou 2024). The oldest known print dates to 1712 or 1713 (printed in Venice by Bortoli); the oldest surviving print dates to 1744 (Bortoli). Reprints continued to be made well into the 20th century.
The metaphrasis is a rather faithful ‘rewording’ of Andreopoulos’ translation. The two versions offer largely the same text, though the metaphrasis has one extra story that seems to be unique to it (Fish in the field), as it does not appear in Andreopoulos or any of the eastern text traditions of Sindbad. The story is embedded in another story and is told, not by one of the counsellors or the stepmother but by one of the protagonists in the 7th counsellor’s story. The metaphrasis also changes the storyline of one of the stories (Mel) to an ostensibly more plausible one. (In Andreopoulos’ version, the escalating violence over the honeycomb begins with a bee that is attracted to the honey, killed by the merchant's cat, who is then killed by the hunter's dog. The translator responsible for the metaphrasis omits the cat and introduces a woman from the merchant’s village, who claims the hunter stole the beehive from her village and tries to grab it. The dog then barks at the woman, the hunter and the merchant start to fight, and the inhabitants of the two villages join in and they all kill each other. In this version, the bee’s presence is pointless. Some of the post-Byzantine versions try to make sense of the role of the bee by making the woman say that the bee was from her village and recognised provenance of the stolen honey). These and other minor differences can help to determine which unseen or understudied manuscripts belong to which tradition.
The post-Byzantine versions of the 16th and 17th centuries are based on the metaphrasis, not on the original Andreopoulos text. They do not go back to one translation but differ considerably in terms of language and expression.
While several studies and editions of the Syntipas narrative exist, the editions need updating. For example, an examination of the manuscripts of the Andreopoulos version to which Jernstedt did not have access at the time is necessary: at least one of them often offers better readings (Vind. phil. gr. 173; see Hinterberger 2023) than the three manuscripts used by Jernstedt. The same holds true for the manuscripts of the Metaphrasis, for which no fewer than seven have not yet been properly collated and studied. Moreover, there are likely to be other manuscripts containing the text, especially in the Greek Library of Parliament and the Athos monasteries, for which the catalogues are often inadequate. Occasionally, there is confusion between the Book of Syntipas and the collection of fables attributed to Syntipas (e.g. in Dresd. gr. Da. 33), as well as between Syntipas and Stephanites and Ichnelates. For instance, in the manuscript Jerusalem Patriarchal Library Ms. 208, Syntipas appears after the text of Stephanites and Ichnelates but is not mentioned in the library catalogue. The same holds true for a large excerpt of Syntipas in another known manuscript, Munich Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Cod. gr. 525. It is therefore likely that there are more such cases, and it would be worth examining manuscripts that contain the texts frequently found alongside Syntipas, such as Stephanites and Ichnelates, the collection of fables attributed to Syntipas, and the Life of Aesop.
[By Marjolijne Janssen, ed. by Jane Bonsall]