The Seven Sleepers turning on their sides. William of Malmesbury says that Edward the Confessor, in his mind’s eye, saw the seven sleepers turn from their right sides to their left, and (he adds) whenever they turn on their sides, it indicates great disasters to Christendom.
Woe, woe to England! I have seen a vision:
The seven sleepers in the cave of Ephesus
Have turned from right to left.
Tennyson, Harold, i. 1.
Seven Wise Masters. Lucien, the son of Dolopathos, was placed under the charge of Virgil, and was tempted in manhood by his step-mother. He repelled her advances, and she accused him to the king of taking liberties with her. By consulting the stars it was discovered that if he could tide over seven days his life would be spared; so seven wise masters undertook to tell the king a tale each, in illustration of rash judgments. When they had all told their tales, the prince related, under the disguise of a tale, the story of the queen’s wantonness; whereupon Lucien was restored to favor, and the queen was put to death.—Sandabar, Parables (contemporary with King Courou).
*** John Rolland, of Dalkeith, has rendered this legend into Scotch verse. There is an Arabic version by Nasr Allah (twelfth century), borrowed from the Indian by Sandabar. In the Hebrew version by Rabbi Joel (1270), the legend is called Kalilah and Dimnah.
Seven Wise Men (The).
One of Plutarch’s brochures in the Moralia is entitled “The Banquet of the Seven Wise Men,” in which Periander is made to give an account of a contest at Chalcis between Homer and Hesiod, in which the latter wins the prize, and receives a tripod, on which he caused to be engraved this inscription:
This Hesiod vows to the Heliconian nine,
In Chalcis won from Homer the divine.
Seven Wise Men of Greece (The), seven Greeks of the sixth century B.C., noted for their maxims.
Bias. His maxim was, “Most men are bad” (“There is none that doeth good, no, not one,” Psalm xiv. 3): Οἱ πλέιους κακοὶ (fl. B.C. 550).
Chilo. “Consider the end:” Τέλος ὁρᾳν μακροῦ βίου (fl. B.C. 590).