IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
| |||||||||
|
| IIIF Color HighRes |
| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Citation Information
111
i i.
•
14
INTRODUCTION
After relating the battle and the thoroughness of the victory,
ending in the conflagration of five-and-twenty captured galleys,
the poet concludes by an admonition to the enemy to moderate
his pride and curb his arrogant tongue, harping on the obnoxious
epithet porci leproxi, which seems to have galled the Genoese.*
He concludes
" Nor can I at all remember Ever to have heard the story
Of a fight wherein the Victors Reaped so rich a meed of glory ! " t
The community of Genoa decreed that the victory should be
commemorated by the annual presentation of a golden pall to
the monastery of St. German's, the saint on whose feast (28th
May) it had been won. 1:
The startling news was received at Venice with wrath and
grief, for the flower of their navy had perished, and all energies
were bent at once to raise an overwhelming force.§ The Pope
(Boniface VIII.) interfered as arbiter, calling for plenipotentiaries
from both sides. But spirits were too much inflamed, and this
mediation came to nought.
Troubadour warrior Bertram de Born, whom Dante found in such evil plight below (xxviii. 118 segq. ), in which he sings with extraordinary spirit the joys of war :-
"I.e u3 bit gut tan no in'a °abo.
Ianjaxs, ni beur.e, tti bormir,
eunt a .quant auk .cribar, ALOR !
D'ambas la part. ; et aug aßnir
Cabals boita ixez l'ombratv.. .
" I tell you a zest far before
Aught of slumber, or drink, or of food,
I snatch when the shouts of ALOR
Ring from both sides : and out of the wood
Comes the neighing of steeds dimly seen. . .
POE
•
In a galley fight at Tyre in 1258, according to a Latin narrative, the Genoese shout " Ad arma, ad arma ! ad ipsos, ad ipsos !" The cry of the Venetians before engaging the Greeks is represented by Martino da Canale, in his old French, as " or a yaus or a yaus ! " that of the Genoese on another occasion as Aur ! Azar ! and this last is the shout of the Catalans also in Ramon de Muntaner. ( Villemain, Lilt. du Moyeu Age, i. 99 ; Archiv. Stor. Ital. viii. 364, 5o6 ; Pertz, Script. xviii. 239 ; Muntaner, 269, 287.) Recently in a Sicilian newspaper, narrating an act of gallant and successful reprisal (only too rare) by country folk on a body of the brigands who are such a scourge to parts of the island, I read that the honest men in charging the villains raised a shout of "Ad iddi ! Ad iddi ! "
* A phrase curiously identical, with a similar sequence, is attributed to an Austrian General at the battle of Skalitz in 1866. (Steel's Letters.)
~
E no me posso aregordar
Dalcuno romanzo vertadê Donde oyse uncha cointar
Alcun triusn fo si sobré !
$ Stella in Muratori, xvii. 984. § Dandulo, Ibid. xii.
404-405.
•
~
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright (C) 2003-2019 National Institute of Informatics and The Toyo Bunko. All Rights Reserved.