The third authority of which she habitually made use was of a different character, supplying her, not with mythological or legendary tales, but with moral maxims, one of which, as we have already remarked, she generally quoted at the end of each “glose.” These maxims are derived from a singular work known as “Dicta Philosophorum,” and consisting of long strings of apophthegms attached to the names of various ancient sages. They begin with Sedechias, of whom it is said “primus fuit per quem nutu Dei lex precepta fuit,” and besides Homer, Solon, Hippocrates, Pythagoras, Diogenes, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander of Macedon, and Ptolemy, they include Hermes Trismegistus and such strange and evidently corrupted names as Tac, Salquinus (or, as it is written in some MSS., Zaqualquin), Rabion (or Sabion), Assaron, Longinon, Magdarges, Texillus (or Thesillus) and others, some of which have a distinctly oriental appearance. The Arabic original in fact exists in a work written by Abu-’l-Wafá Mobasschir ibn-Fátik al Káïd, an emir of Egypt, in 1053.[42] Sedechias appears there as Adam’s son Seth, and some other of the above names may be dimly recognized in Sab, ancestor of the Sabæans, Lókman, Maháda Gis, and Basilius. From the heading of the Latin version in the MS. from which it has been published,[43] it seems that the work was first translated from Arabic into Greek, and then again from Greek into Latin, the last version being by John de Procida, famous for the prominent part he took in the revolution which freed Sicily from Charles of Anjou and the French in 1282. Christine de Pisan, however, apparently employed a popular French version made from the Latin for Charles VI. by one of his chamberlains, Guillaume de Tignonville, who was afterwards Provost of Paris (1401–1408) and died in 1414. As a copy of it at Paris was written in 1402,[44] it was certainly completed before then, and the probability is that it preceded the “Épître d’Othéa” by several years. It possesses a special interest from the fact that an English version of it had the honour of being the first book actually printed in this country. This was the famous _Dictes and Sayengis of the Philosophres_, which Anthony Wydeville, second Earl Rivers, translated from a copy of De Tignonville’s work lent to him when he was going on a pilgrimage to Compostella in 1473, and which Caxton issued from his newly established press at Westminster in 1477.[45] Neither of them seems to have been aware that another English version was in existence, which dated from 1450.[46] This is still preserved in two MSS. in the British Museum, but has never been printed. The late 15th century copy in Add. MS. 34,193 (ff. 137–201) has the advantage of being complete, but it bears no evidence of origin, having neither title nor preface and ending merely with the words “Hic est finis libri moralium philosophorum.” Harley MS. 2,266, on the contrary, though it is