starting on a voyage, when the man whom he had buried appeared to him in
a dream, and warned him on no account to go by the ship he had chosen,
as it would undoubtedly be wrecked. Impressed by the vision, the poet
remained behind, and the ship went down soon afterwards, with all on
board. Simonides expressed his gratitude in a poem describing the event,
and in several epigrams. Libanius even goes so far as to place the scene
of the event at Tarentum, where he was preparing to take ship for
Sicily.

The tale is probably mythical. It belongs to a group of stories of the
grateful dead, which have been the subject of an interesting book
recently published by the Folk-Lore Society.[87] Mr. Gerould doubts
whether it really belongs to the cycle, as it is nearly two centuries
earlier, even in Cicero's version, than any other yet discovered; but it
certainly inspired Chaucer in his Nun's Priest's Tale, and it may well
have influenced other later versions. The Jewish version is closer to
the Simonides story than any of the others, and I will quote it in Mr.
Gerould's words.[88]

"The son of a rich merchant of Jerusalem sets off after his father's
death to see the world. At Stamboul he finds hanging in chains the body
of a Jew, which the Sultan has commanded to be left there till his
co-religionists shall have repaid the sum that the man is suspected of
having stolen from his royal master. The hero pays this sum, and has the
corpse buried. Later, during a storm at sea he is saved by a stone, on
which he is brought to land, whence he is carried by an eagle back to
Jerusalem. There a white-clad man appears to him, explaining that he is
the ghost of the dead, and that he has already appeared as stone and
eagle. The spirit further promises the hero a reward for his good deed
in the present and in the future life."