Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [187]
Marco did not hesitate to take others to court for small matters as well as large. He called a fellow Venetian, Paolo Girardo, to account for a modest unpaid commission for the sale of a pound and a half of musk. To complicate matters slightly, Girardo had surreptitiously sold a small portion, and then returned the remainder to Marco, who, on weighing it, discovered that one-sixth ounce was missing. Outraged, he sued. Described in legal documents as a “noble man,” Marco won a resounding victory and had the paltry satisfaction of being repaid by Girardo, who faced jail if he failed to make Marco whole within a reasonable amount of time.
MARCO POLO’S reputation survived this petty episode and others like it.
At one point Marco drew the attention of Pietro d’Abano, a professor of medicine and philosophy. The two met several times to discuss Marco’s voyage beyond Venice, and each time d’Abano came away impressed by his wide-ranging knowledge, his retentive memory, and, as is obvious on every page of the Travels, his outstanding powers of observation. Returning to Padua, d’Abano composed a treatise in which he complimented “Marco the Venetian” as “the man who has encompassed more of the world in his travels than any I have ever known, and a most diligent investigator,” and proceeded to recount their conversations concerning astronomy, of all things, and, in particular, a certain “star” visible in Zanzibar, the island Marco claimed to have visited near the end of his journey. “He saw this same star under the Antarctic Pole, and it has a great tail, of which he drew the figure, thus.”
Thereafter, Marco spoke as the endlessly curious traveler he once had been, gushing forth details in wild profusion, as if he had found a new Rustichello ready to immortalize his experiences. “He informs me furthermore,” d’Abano wrote, “that thence camphor, lignum aloes, and brazilwood are exported to us. He informs me that the heat there is intense, and the habitations few in number. These things indeed he saw on a certain island at which he arrived by sea. He says, moreover, that the men there are very large, and that there are also very great rams that have wool coarse and stiff as are the bristles of our pigs.”
D’Abano asked Marco whether it was true that people who live “in hot places are timid, and those who are, on the other hand, in cold places, virile,” as Aristotle claimed. Marco attempted to reconcile Aristotle with his own experience as best he could. “I heard from Marco the Venetian, who traveled across the Equator, that he had found there men larger in body than here, and he had found this because in such places one does not meet with the cold that is exhausting and consequently tends to make them smaller.” According to d’Abano’s account, Marco was debunking classical theories in a free-flowing, nonsystematic way drawn from personal observation, yet the professor continued to hold him in the highest esteem. If no longer a traveler, Marco could at least enjoy a burgeoning reputation as the sage of Venice.
BY 1318, when Marco was sixty-four, he could look with some satisfaction on his growing family. Fantina, the oldest of the three daughters, married Marco Bragadin, with a splendid dowry provided by her wealthy father. Her younger sister, Bellela, followed the same pattern when she married Bertuccio Querini, from an old Venetian family; the union produced two children. Less is known of Moreta, Marco’s third daughter, who left no recorded issue, and probably did not marry while her father was alive.
Marco’s new sons-in-law became