Marco Was Afterwards
Employed By The Khan, For A Considerable Number Of Years, In Several
Important Affairs, As Will Appear In The Relation Of His Travels.
At length, the three Polos returned to Venice, in 1295, after an absence of
twenty-five or twenty-six years, during which long period they had never
been heard of by their friends and countrymen, seventeen years of which
Marco had been employed in the service of the great khan.
On their return
to their own house in Venice, they were entirely forgotten by their
relations and former acquaintances, and had considerable difficulty to
establish their identity, and to get themselves recognized by their family,
and were obliged to use extraordinary means to recover the respect which
was their due, and an acknowledgement of their name, family, and rank, the
particulars of which will be found in the travels themselves.
About three years after the return of these adventurous travellers,
hostilities arose between the republics of Genoa and Venice. The Genoese
admiral, Lampa Doria, came to the island of Curzola with a fleet of seventy
gallies, to oppose whom, the Venetians fitted out a great naval force under
Andrea Dandolo, under whom Marco Polo had the command of a galley. The
Venetians were totally defeated in a great naval engagement, with the loss
of their admiral and eighty-five ships, and Marco Polo had the misfortune
to be among the number of the prisoners.
Harris alleges that he remained a prisoner during several years, in spite
of every offer of ransom that was made for his liberation. But in this he
must have mistaken, or been misled by the authorities which he trusted to,
as peace was concluded in 1299, the year immediately subsequent to the
naval engagement in which he was made prisoner. While in prison at Genoa,
many of the young nobility are said to have resorted to Marco, to listen to
the recital of his wonderful travels and surprizing adventures; and they
are said to have prevailed upon him to send to Venice for the notes which
he had drawn up during his peregrinations, by means of which the following
relation is said to have been written in Latin from has dictation. From the
original Latin, the account of his travels was afterwards translated into
Italian; and from this again, abridgements were afterwards made in Latin
and diffused over Europe.
According to Baretti[2], the travels of Marco Polo were dictated by him in
1299, while in the prison of Genoa, to one Rustigielo, an inhabitant of
Pisa, who was his fellow prisoner. They were afterwards published in
Italian, and subsequently translated into Latin by Pessuri, a Dominican
monk of Bologna. Copies of the original manuscript, though written in the
Venetian dialect, which is extremely different from the Tuscan or pure
Italian, were multiplied with great rapidity in all parts of Italy, and
even made their way into France and Germany. From one or more of these,
corrupted by the carelessness or ignorance of transcribers, some of whom
may have abridged the work, or may even have interpolated it from other
sources, a thing quite common before the invention of printing, the Latin
translations may have been made and circulated over Europe.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 223 of 425
Words from 116012 to 116552
of 222093
