The relationship of this Marco to old Maffeo is
not stated, but we may suspect him to have been an illegitimate son.
[Marcolino was a son of Nicolo, son of Marco the Elder; see vol. ii.,
Calendar, No. 6. - H. C.]
[Sidenote: Documentary notices of Polo at this time. The sobriquet of
Milione.]
44. In 1302 occurs what was at first supposed to be a glimpse of Marco as
a citizen, slight and quaint enough; being a resolution on the Books of
the Great Council to exempt the respectable Marco Polo from the penalty
incurred by him on account of the omission to have his water-pipe duly
inspected. But since our Marco's claims to the designation of Nobilis
Vir have been established, there is a doubt whether the providus vir or
prud'-homme here spoken of may not have been rather his namesake Marco
Polo of Cannareggio or S. Geremia, of whose existence we learn from
another entry of the same year.[3] It is, however, possible that Marco the
Traveller was called to the Great Council after the date of the document
in question.
We have seen that the Traveller, and after him his House and his Book,
acquired from his contemporaries the surname, or nickname rather, of Il
Milione. Different writers have given different explanations of the
origin of this name; some, beginning with his contemporary Fra Jacopo
d'Acqui, (supra, p. 54), ascribing it to the family's having brought home
a fortune of a million of lire, in fact to their being millionaires.
This is the explanation followed by Sansovino, Marco Barbaro, Coronelli,
and others.[4] More far-fetched is that of Fontanini, who supposes the
name to have been given to the Book as containing a great number of
stories, like the Cento Novelle or the Thousand and One Nights!
