So This
Messer Marco Milono The Venetian, With The Other Venetian Prisoners, Is
Carried Off To The Prison Of Genoa, And There Kept For A Long Time.
This
Messer Marco was a long time with his father and uncle in Tartary, and
he there saw many things, and made much wealth, and also learned many
things, for he was a man of ability.
And so, being in prison at Genoa,
he made a Book concerning the great wonders of the World, i.e.,
concerning such of them as he had seen. And what he told in the Book was
not as much as he had really seen, because of the tongues of detractors,
who, being ready to impose their own lies on others, are over hasty to
set down as lies what they in their perversity disbelieve, or do not
understand. And because there are many great and strange things in that
Book, which are reckoned past all credence, he was asked by his friends
on his death-bed to correct the Book by removing everything that went
beyond the facts. To which his reply was that he had not told one-half
of what he had really seen!"[30]
This statement regarding the capture of Marco at the Battle of Ayas is
one which cannot be true, for we know that he did not reach Venice till
1295, travelling from Persia by way of Trebizond and the Bosphorus, whilst
the Battle of Ayas of which we have purposely given some detail, was
fought in May, 1294.
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