(two), secretaries, treasurers and _hajibs_. Of the remaining three one
bears on general maxims of practical politics. Another is a testament of
an ancient Persian king to his Wazir. And the third is a maxim of one of
the secretaries of a king. In this manner all these citations are of an
ethicodidactic nature; only they have been invested with a historical
environment and under ordinary circumstances would represent the general
type of writings on political conduct for rulers, standing for the class
of literature designated _Furstenspiegel_. A similar class of citations
is preserved in the "speeches from the throne" and the counsels of the
Sasanian kings which we come across in various Arab historical and
anthological works bearing on Sasanian Persia, as also in the Shah
Nameh.

[Footnote 1: Baron Rosen, Zur arabischen Literatur geschichte der altern
zeit, 1. Ibn Qutaiba; _Kitab Uyunal Akhbar_ (Melanges Asiatiques, VIII,
1880, 745-779, especially 774-775). These citations correspond to those
in the edition of Brockelmann as follows: 21, 12-16; 27, 11-15; 32, 2-8;
44, 13-45, 4; 67, 13-66, 8; 84, 8-16; 107, 2-17; 120, 16-121, 5.]

Gutschmid already noticed in his time that by the Persian historians to
each Sasanian ruler was ascribed a maxim and indicated that with
reference to Ardashir and Anoshiravan these maxims may be taken as the
basis since the _Book of Counsels_ of the former was well-known and a
large number of edifying proverbs of the latter had found admittance
into the national language.[1] Let us add that, as we showed above,
there has been preserved a similar class of _Books of Counsels_, the
reputed author of which is Anoshiravan. The putative dicta of the other
Sasanian kings Gutschmid considered as fabricated being designed to be
brief characterisations of each of them. Gutschmid further advanced the
conjecture that these apophthegms formed the texts under the portraits