The _Secrets of Secrets_ is believed to be the outcome of a gradual process of compilation from very varied sources, and to have reached something like its present form by the seventh or eighth century of our era. But its chapters on physiognomy, as we have seen, go back to Polemon’s treatise, and part of its medical discussion is said to be borrowed from Diocles Caristes who wrote about 320 B. C. Some Graeco-Persian treatise is thought to be the basis of its discussion of kingship. It is also believed to have appropriated bits from popular literature to its own uses. In Arabic there is extant both a longer and a shorter version, and Gaster has edited a Hebrew text which is apparently derived from an Arabic original different from that of any Latin text. The process of successive compilation, or at least, re-editing and repeated translation which the work underwent is suggested by a series of prologues which occur at the beginning. Following the preface of the Latin translator and the table of contents comes what is called “the prologue of a certain doctor in commendation of Aristotle,”[845] in which omnipotent God is prayed to guard the king and some anonymous editor states that he has executed the mandate enjoined upon him to procure the moral work on royal conduct called _The Secret of Secrets_, which Aristotle, chief of philosophers, composed. After some talk about Aristotle and Alexander a second prologue begins with the sentence, “John who translated this book, son of a patrician, most skilful and faithful interpreter of languages, says.” This John appears to have been Yuhanna ibn el-Batrik, or Ibn Yahya al-Batrik, who died in 815 A. D.[846] What he says is that he searched the world over until he came to an oracle of the sun which Esculapides had constructed. There he found a solitary abstemious sage who presented him with this book which he translated from Greek into Chaldaic and thence into Arabic. This passage reminds one of Harpocration’s prefatory remarks to his daughter in the _Kiranides_; indeed, it is quite in the usual style of apocryphal writings. [Sidenote: The Latin translations of John of Spain and Philip.]