Reworking
The "metaphrasis" is a rather faithful ‘rewording’ of Andreopoulos’ original translation. The two versions offer largely the same text, though the metaphrasis has one extra story that seems to be unique to it (Ingenia 3, or, The 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 the narrative Ingenia 1, 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 story is meant to serve as an additional example of the wiles of women. The Reworking version 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 author responsible for the reworking 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 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 Reworked version, not on the original Andreopoulos text. They do not go back to one translation but differ considerably in terms of language and expression.
A note on the story order (below): in all versions of Syntipas, the second story told by the seventh master is Ingenia, or, The Trick: The Wiles of Women Collection. In this story, a man believes he has recorded every instance of women's trickery and deceit, throughout history. He is then challenged by a woman, which demonstrates that women's creative capacity for deception cannot be captured in a single text. As part of that story, the author of the Reworking inserted a new, additional story. The redactor added this new tale into the frame of Ingenia, and it is narrated by the woman herself: she tells this tale, titled Ingenia 3, or The Fish in the Field, to the man, who does not have it recorded in his 'Wiles of Women' collection. It serves both as a further example of the deception of which women are capable, and also the limits of men's ability to comprehend them. Ingenia 3 is entered below as its' own story, as the 20th story told; however, it should be understood as part of the previous narrative.
General Information
Recorded Branch of This Secondary Version
Pattern of Embedded Stories in This Version
Connected Manuscripts