3267 ff. Justinian II is described by Gibbon as a cruel tyrant, whose deposition by Leontius was fully deserved, and who, when restored by the help of Terbelis, took a ferocious vengeance on his opponents: ‘during the six years of his new reign, he considered the axe, the cord, and the rack as the only instruments of royalty.’ Nothing apparently could be less appropriate than the epithet ‘pietous,’ which Gower bestows upon him.
3295 ff. This again was a very common story: cp. Gesta Romanorum, 48 (ed. Oesterley). Hoccleve tells it with a reference to Orosius, Regement of Princes, 3004 ff. Gower probably had it from Godfrey of Viterbo, Pantheon, p. 181 (ed. 1584), where Berillus is given for Perillus, as in our text. He takes ‘Phalaris Siculus’ as the tyrant’s name, and shortens it to Siculus.
3302. I take the preceding three lines as a parenthesis, and this as following l. 3298.
3341. ‘Dionys’ is a mistake for Diomede, or rather Diomedes is confused with the tyrant Dionysius.
3355 ff. Cp. Ovid, Metam. i. 221 ff.
3359. With othre men, i. e. ‘by other men’: cp. viii. 2553.
3387 ff. This characteristic of the lion is mentioned by Brunetto Latini, Trésor, p. 224.
3417 ff. This story is told much as it appears in Justin, Epit. i. 8, and Orosius, Hist. ii. 7, but the name Spertachus (Spartachus) is apparently from Peter Comestor (Migne, Patrol.. vol. 198, p. 1471), who gives this as the name of Cyrus in his boyhood. The same authority may have supplied the name ‘Marsagete,’ for the histories named above call Thamyris only ‘queen of the Scythians’; but Comestor omits the details of the story.
3207* ff. The tale of the Jew and the Pagan is from the Secretum Secretorum, where it is told as a warning against trusting those who are not of our faith. The differences are mainly as follows. No names of places are mentioned in the original; the ‘pagan’ is called ‘magus orientalis,’ and he rides a mule: the Jew is without provisions, and the Magian feeds him as well as allowing him to ride: the Jew is found not dead but thrown from the mule, with a broken leg and other injuries—there is no mention of a lion except in the entreaties of the Magian, ‘noli me derelinquere in deserto, ne forte interficiar a leonibus.’ The Magian is about to leave him to die, but the Jew pleads that he has acted only in accordance with his own law, and again appeals to the Magian to show him the mercy which his religion enjoins. Finally the Magian carries him away and delivers him safely to his own people. Probably our author thought that this form of the story unduly sacrificed justice to mercy, and therefore he killed his Jew outright.