The Seven Sages of Rome

The Seven Sages of Rome is a medieval anthology of stories, popular across Europe, that uses a framing narrative to delay a prince's execution. Each day, one of the seven sages tells a new story to postpone the sentence until the prince's innocence is proven. This storytelling technique is similar to that found in The Thousand and One Nights, where Scheherazade tells stories to her king to avoid her own death. The collection reflects the medieval European tradition of short narrative forms used for entertainment and moral instruction.12