Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 2.djvu/512

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500
NOTES.

Note 88.Page 315.

"I know not of any book of Josephus on this subject. The first editor of the Latin Josephus was Ludovicus Cendrata, of Verona, who was ignorant that he was publishing a modern translation."—"The substance of this chapter is founded on a rabbinical tradition related by Fabricius[1]. "When Noah planted the vine, Satan attended, and sacrificed a sheep, a lion, an ape, and a sow. These animals were to symbolise the gradations of ebriety. When a man begins to drink, he is meek and ignorant as the lamb, then becomes bold as the lion; his courage is soon transformed into the foolishness of the ape, and at last he wallows in the mire like a sow. Chaucer hence says, in the Manciples Prologue, as the passage is justly corrected by Mr. Tyrwhitt,

'I trowe that ye have dronken wine of ape,
And that is when men plaien at a strawe'.

In the old Kalendrier des Bergers, as Mr. Tyrwhitt has remarked, Vin de singe, vin de mouton, vin de lyon, and vin de porceau, are mentioned in

  1. Cod. Pseudepigr. Vet. Testam., Vol. I. p. 275.