A Roman Legion Lost in China.

The battle of Carrhae[1] ended fifty-three years before the birth of Jesus Christ, on the last day of May. It was a shameful disaster for the Roman army: seven legions with the strength of 45,000 men were humiliated and routed by 10,000 Parthian archers.

Marcus Licinius Crassus

 

The commanding officer of the unfortunate expedition was Marcus Licinius Crassus, a sixty-two-year-old tribune eager for glory and wealth, even though he was already the richest man in Rome. He organized the campaign – perhaps also because he envied the military successes of Pompey and Caesar, and foolishly thought his amateur dramatics might equal their professionalism. His only triumph had been achieved with Pompey’s help: the bloody suppression of Spartacus and his slaves. He had insufficient experience to embark on a large-scale operation himself; thus, Rome’s Republican government were loathe to let him depart with such a sizeable army, especially since there was no real emergency in the east. During the heated public debate about the excursion, a tribunus plebis named Ateius argued vehemently in opposition. Plutarch wrote that, when Ateius realised that his efforts were in vain and that he would not receive enough supporting votes, he theatrically lit a brazier and, while throwing grains of incense onto the flames, started to curse Crassus and evoke the infernal gods. Judging from the name and the behaviour of this man, we can guess that he was of Etruscan descent! To strengthen his own case, Crassus had enlisted the support of Pompey and Caesar, who saw an opportunity to free themselves of a powerful competitor.

When the Senate granted approval, Crassus assembled metropolitan legions in Rome, marched to Campania and then to Brindisi, where he met with other legions summoned from Calabria. The troops embarked despite of stormy seas – an early indication of his ineptitude. Not all the ships reached the other shore.

Crassus had the blind goddess Fortune on his side during his youth: he emerged unscathed from the civil wars, and though he was implicated in the Catiline conspiracy he suffered no consequences. He also settled the debts of a spendthrift Caesar whilst being tightfisted himself and with his family.

But as he aged he became a sort of blunderer, making numerous and serious mistakes, some of them mentioned by the historians who have written in detail about his last expedition. For instance, in a speech to his soldiers he proclaimed that he would destroy a bridge ‘so that none of you would be able to return’ but when he noticed the expressions of dismay amongst his soldiers, Crassus quickly corrected himself by explaining that he had been referring to the enemy. At one point he ordered the distribution of lentils and salt to the troops, oblivious that this was a meal offered at funerals. And when he dropped on the floor the entrails of a sacrificial animal placed in his hands by a haruspex (a soothsayer) Crassus cried: “Fear not; despite my age, the hilt of my sword will not slip from my hand!” On the day of the battle Crassus wore a black tunic, instead of the purple colour de rigour for Roman generals, and even though he quickly returned to his tent to change, he left his officers speechless.

Moreover Crassus refused to listen to his veterans advisors in favour of marching on the coast and avoiding the desert to reach the Parthian capital. Rather, he trusted the Arab, Arimanes, and his 6,000 horsemen, who had secretly sided with the Parthians and abandoned the Romans shortly after engaging in the battle.

Crassus ordered his soldiers to organize themselves in square formations, shielded on all sides without and packed like sardines within. It caged them, and they were slaughtered by the Parthian’s arrows, shot from their reflex bows with recurved edges. These bows doubled the propulsion power, enabling them to shoot at a distance of up to 400 metres. This kind of bow was a Mongol invention further perfected by the Chinese in the seventeenth century, when their arrows became capable of reaching a distance of up to 600 metres.

Seeing the grave danger, Crassus’ son, Publius, attempted a sally with a thousand Gallic cavalrymen, but he and half of them were slain, the remainder taken prisoners. The head of Publius was put on a spear and shown to the Romans and to his father. On this tragic occasion we can see the only glimpse of Roman greatness in Crassus who momentarily ceased to act like an old fool and told to his soldiers to keep up the fight. The death of his son, he said, was his private injury, not theirs.

At nightfall, Crassus agreed to negotiate with the enemy; however, it was a trap. He was killed and his head was also cut off. 20,000 Romans died that day; 10,000 were taken prisoner, and the remainder managed to escape back to Italy.

This shameful setback was partially redressed by Marcus Antonius a few years later and a diplomatic solution with the Parthians was reached under Augustus in 20 BC with a peace treaty that allowed for the retrieval of lost insignia, including the return of the eagles and the banners of the seven Roman legions. When Augustus sought also the return of prisoners from 53 BC the Parthians maintained that there were none to repatriate. Their practice had always been to shift prisoners caught in the West to Turkmenistan in the East. By so doing they aimed to secure their loyalty against their worst enemies – the Huns – and this is probably what happened to the unfortunate 10,000 legionnaires captured during Crassus’s battle. The Roman historian Plinius also upheld this theory, which stood until 1955, when an American Sinologist, Homer Hasenpflug Dubs, gave a speech during a conference in London, titled, “A Roman City in Ancient China”.

Dubs had found that in the annals of the Han dynasty there is record of the capture of a Hun city by the Chinese army in 36 BC named Zhizhi, now known as Dzhambul, located close to Tashkent, in Uzbekistan. Dubs was deeply impressed by the fact that the Chinese recorded the discovery of palisades of tree trunks, and that the enemy had used a previously unseen battle formation, namely a testudo of selected warriors forming a cover of overlapping shields in front of their bodies in the first row and over the heads in the following rows. [2]

   

                   

The Chinese were so struck by the military skills of the opposing warriors that they moved them, after enlisting, further East, to a place that by imperial decree was named Li-Jien (which sounds in Chinese as the word “legion” and is the name the Chinese called Rome) in Gansu province. It was uncommon for Chinese to name their cities after barbarian names: the only two other known cases, Kucha and Wen-Siu, occurred where large colonies of foreigners had settled. The legionnaires numbered 145, and formed a garrison protecting the inhabitants of Li-Jien from Tibetan raids.

Dubs claimed to have identified Li-Jien as the place now known as Zhelaizhai, near Lanzhou. Subsequent archaeological expeditions made by Chinese, Australians and Americans appear to support the choice of this Chinese city even though the smoking gun, which may finally solve the mystery, has yet to be found.

During excavations in 1993 fortifications were unearthed, as well as a type of trunk fixed with stakes, possibly dating back to the time of the arrival of the legionnaires. The ‘trunk’ was a kind of hoist used by the Romans to build fortifications but unknown in China. It is now on display in the Lanzhou Museum.

The physical features of those living in Lanzhou, in some cases, also give some credence to Dubs’s theory. A certain Sung Guorong, for instance, stands at the unusual height of 1.82 metres, is blond and with an aquiline nose and big blue eyes, and loudly proclaims that he is Roman, not Chinese. He also claims that there are at least 100 others  in the area with similar features.

Certainly among the legionnaires there were some German as well as Gaul auxiliaries. Perhaps one of Mr Song’s ancestors was one of those 500 horsemen captured during Publius Crassus’s tragic sally. Lanzhou University has conducted DNA tests on the population of Zhelaizhai and their findings show that 46 per cent of them have genetic sequences similar to Europeans’.

Future research conducted using the Y chromosome (which is subject to little variation as it is transmitted directly from father to son) will shed more light on this mystery, and will help gather more precise information about European kinship ties.

Apart from this genetic evidence, Roman coins and pottery have also been unearthed in Zhelaizhai, as well as a helmet bearing the engraving in Chinese characters: One of the Prisoners. However, Zhelaizhai is located along the Silk Road, where such discoveries are found frequently. Similar artefacts have been found in distant places such as Vietnam and Korea.

One of Zhelaizhai’s specific characteristics, worth mentioning, is the passion for bulls and bullfighting, which continues to this day, and which is not shared by neighbouring areas. Local authorities, wishing to capitalize on the tourist potential offered by this link, have built a pavilion with Roman marble statues to attract visitors.

The Chinese were aware of the existence of a large Western empire and sent a legation in the year 97 AD, headed by Kan Ying. This legation arrived in Mesopotamia but, prior to continuing on to Rome, were misled by the Parthians into believing the journey would take two years of sailing. The Parthians had no interest in having their two main customers meet, as this would have cut them out of a lucrative trade.[3]

The naïve Kan Yin trusted the Parthians and decided to return to China empty handed.

Marcus Aurelius in 166 AD sent an official delegation of Romans to the Chinese capital of Luoyang and their arrival is recorded in the dynastic annals; however, the Chinese did not respond favourably to the Roman overtures, perhaps because of the occurrence in 184 AD of the peasant rebellion known as the Yellow Turbans, which caused a frightful civil war and the fall of the Han dynasty, which had ruled over China for four centuries.

(This article was published in a Hong Kong magazine on February 2003. Since than my story went viral on the web. I was contacted by an historian from Turkey asking if I knew more, because it seems that traditionally it was from Zheilazhai that begun the march West of the Turkish nation, or better say the Ashina clan within the Turkish nation..)

This article was published for the first time in Fabruary 2003.


[1] Carrhae, now known as Harran, is located on Turkey’s oriental border.

 

[2] These facts are reported in the biography of Chen Tang, one of the victorious Chinese generals, written by the historian Ban Gu (32 – 92).

 

[3] It is well known that Caesar spent a considerable amount of gold for bespoke-tailored togas made of silk, and that he gave Servilia, his mistress and mother of Brutus, a costly pearl from the South Seas. He was a trendsetter…

 

 

A Venetian Lady gave England to the Tudor at the battle of Boswort in 1485.

Her name was Christine de Pizan or Cristina de Pisan (1363 – 1430) and she was the first European lady that successfully managed to be a professional writer. She was mainly known for her books of poetry but she also wrote a little known book on military strategy known as Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry composed around 1410.

 Cristine de Pizan lecturing men.

 

Her guiding lights for the composition of the book were Vegetius and John of Legnano. She lived at the French Court and it was there that the Earl of Oxford read her treatise and then applied her tactical counsels during the battle of Bosworth, fought on 22 August 1485 by King Richard III, the last of the Plantagenet, against the usurper – aided by French and several British traitors – Henry VII Tudor. That was the conclusion of the War of the Roses.

Oxford was so grateful to her that later commissioned to the printer William Caxton the publication of that book. The duke of Norfolk, commander of Richard III forces, launched his attack on the army of Henry VII, lead by Oxford, in the traditional way, splitting his forces in a left wing, right wing and centre. Oxford, following de Pizan’s advice, kept all his troops, mainly composed by French soldiers and knights, massed together to form sort of Roman squares. Richard III seeing that the situation was turning bad for him launched a direct attack on Henry, trying to kill him. He managed to kill his standard bearer but because of the intervention of the traitor Lord Stanley and his men, he bravely tried to rally his soldiers and pushed on his attack screaming : ‘Treason, treason, treason!’  and not ‘my kingdom for a horse!’ as Shakespeare wrote. Richard III was taken and killed.

These detail had been re examined and proven true after the discovery of the skeleton of Richard the III in 2012 under a car park, DNA testing with one of his descendant still living in Canada had confirmed the find, which had rekindled great interest on the subject. Richard III was painted as a deformed and wicked murderer and these rumours created a cracks in his credibility which were used by his Tudor successors – which had no dynastic rights to rule – to mount an invading expedition, the last in history, from France and seize supreme power in Great Britain. It was a process of defamation strikingly similar to that experienced by the Roman emperor Nero.

Christine de Pizan  wrote 41 works during her long career. She married in 1380 at the age of 15, had three children and was a widow 10 years later. She spent most of her life at the Abbey of Poissy near Paris writing in Middle French. She challenged misogyny and stereotypes about women prevalent in the male-dominated medieval society.

She was the daughter of Tommaso di Benvenuto da Pizzano (originating from Pizzano, near Bologna) a cour astrologer, physician, councillor of the Republic of Venice. After the birth of his daughter he accepted an offer from the King of France, Charles V, as physician and alchemist and moved to Paris.

 

Christine de Pizan presents her book to Queen Isabeau  of Bavaria.

 

 

 

Her most famous work was the The book of the city of Ladies and the Treasure of the City of Ladies. Her final work was an eulogy of Joan d’Arc.

For those interested to know more about her:

http://www.christinedepizan.net

 

 

 

 

Gonzo jounalism at the South China Morning Post

An article by David Wilson was printed on the South China Morning Post on the 2nd of June 2013, the National Day of Italy.

I believe that the journalist was informed by the editor that he had to come up with something related to Italy so he racked his brain to insert a few lines in the review of a classic just to keep Italians happy. He must have tough that a Gonzo review of a newly released edition of the book of the Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, that he had to do anyway, will do.

Hey, but was not Marcus Aurelius born near Cordoba, Spain? Yes, indeed, but that is a small detail. So here we have a splendid example of Gonzo journalism that is to say speaking of things which are not related at all with the subject or the facts.

Here are a few of his gems with my comments inserted in bold characters:

Marcus Aurelius was a superman: a great philosopher and a legendary emperor. Aurelius ruled from AD161 to his death in AD180, the last of the “five good emperors”, to use a phrase later coined by political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli.

His reign was dogged by attacks from Germany, rebellions in northern Italy and Egypt, and an outbreak of the plague. He wrote much of Meditations on campaign between AD170 and AD180. Northern Italy? Pardon me, Mr. Wilson do you mean Austria?

Written in Greek, Meditations remains admired as a masterpiece of moral, stoical logical thinking with a streak of sensitivity – the cultural critic D.A. Rees praised it as “unendingly moving and inspiring”.

Aurelius never intended his tour de force, which is split into 12 parts, to be published. Essentially, it is a grim hotchpotch of ruminations on whatever subject caught his eye.

Aurelius wrote with feeling about the morning. One of his tips reads: “Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today inquisitive, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill.”

Almost every statement Aurelius wrote is underpinned by grace and restraint. Reading Meditations could lead the reader to think he could be preferable to the current Italian president, “master puppeteer” Giorgio Napolitano.

Master puppeteer? What a finesse, what a flight of fancy, mister Wilson! Hard life to be a journo, eh? The sheet of white paper in front of you, the need to be on time…

After his death Aurelius was put on a pedestal as the perfect emperor, whose reign contrasted sharply with the eras that followed.

But despite Aurelius’ outward guru image, he was wedded to war – the expansion of the Roman Empire through its vicious efficiency. Another niggle: Aurelius’ writing has no sense of humour.

Still, winningly, Meditations keys into the stoical slant of modern popular psychology. “You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realise this, and you will find strength,” Aurelius wrote.

Some of his statements have entered our language in modified form. One example: “You will find rest from vain fancies if you perform every act in life as though it were your last.”

Aurelius achieved a kind of immortality. A bronze four-metre-high statue of him astride a horse remains in Rome’s Piazza del Campidoglio.

That is a copy, Mr. Wilson. The original was put away in 1981. You may see it inside the Musei Capitolini in Rome.

His statue is depicted on the reverse of the Italian €0.50 coin. He seems like the embodiment of a solidity that today’s teetering Italian economy sadly lacks.

Solidity of the Italian economy? Italian coin? That coin is called euro and it is also valid in Germany and France.

We are disappointed by this article, Mr. Wilson. We were expecting something on the state of potato growing on the Andes and the sexual habits of the polar bears. Never mind, perhaps next time.

 

 

 

S.A.C.R.E.D. by Ai Wei Wei – the new Leonardo Da Vinci – at a show attached to the Venice’s Biennale.

 Ai Weiwei (艾未未)  was born in China in the year 1957 the son of the famous Chinese poet Ai Qing, who got in great troubles during the Cultural Revolution (1967 – 1976).

Ai is a Chinese contemporary artist – a sort of modern days Leonardo da Vinci – active in sculpture, installations, architecture, curatorial work, photography, film, social and political criticism. Ai Weiwei collaborated with Swiss architects to design the Bird Nest national stadium in Beijing.  As a political activist, he had been and still is highly and openly critical of the Chinese Government handling of the Chinese people, which is contrary to the Chinese Constitution.

Photos of his latest work called Diposition  have circulated before the beginning of the show in Venice. The gigantic figures,  six in number made of acrylic and steel, were secretly shipped out of China, the title of  the individual panels is ‘S.A.C.R.E.D.'( acronyms of (S)upper, (A)ccusers, (C)leansing, (R)itual, (E)ntropy e (D oubt). They were then shipped to Italy through an arranged by London’s Lisson Gallery. This will be part of a collateral event of the 55th international art exhibitions: the Sant’Antonin church at the Sestiere, initially built in the VII century by the Badoer Family then rebuilt and consecrated in 1680.

 

 

 

The artist himself was forbidden to travel to the opening of his show, and because of this his mother Gao Ying – an enthusiastic believer of his  genius and his strongest supporter – went to Venice to inaugurate it. It has been reported that when the pictures were shown to her she started to cry and went away refusing to talk to journalists. These works of art are now placed in the old church closed inside a series of Egyptian-style sarcophagi which will be opened soon and visitors will be able to peep inside.

Another of Ai Weiwei’s work is shown at the German pavilion, it is called ‘Bang’, a fantastic structure composed of 866 wooden stools, used to explores the craft traditions of China and ideas of cultural value  within the context of contemporary art.

 

S.A.C.R.E.D is a work of art that, I am sure, will be immortal. I do believe that even after a millennium the China we know today will be judged also by looking at these images in which the artist describes his personal humiliation as a human being. Ai Weiwei was incarcerated for 81 days on 2011 on trump financial charges (tax fraud)  and kept under watch by guards day and night in a secret location. These strong images represent the repressive side of China, indeed they will be come sort of icons like ‘Quarto Stato’ by Pellizza da Volpedo, dating to 1901 which has a similar gigantic size.

 

 

 

 

 

It is probable that China will strike back soon at Ai Weiwei. They cannot tolerate such kind of high level dissent. It is better for Ai Weiwei to enjoy his present glory as, most probably, he will get arrested soon and detained in harsher conditions and for a longer time.

 

Machiavelli in China

Italians love celebrations, monuments, official ceremonies. They are, after all, a demonstration of democracy at work because they give a chance to everybody to become a president, vice president, member of the board, of something.

Now we know that we have a State sponsored committee for the celebrations of five centuries of the writing (not publishing) of the Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli (1469 – 1527). Normally  it is the publication day that set in motion such celebrations – but the Prince was published posthumously in 1532.  In our case inside a Roman palace someone decided that it will be the ‘probable’ day of completing the manuscript that really count, even knowing that Machiavelli had worked on it well after 1513. The provisional title of the draft was De Principatibus and the dedication to Lorenzo de’ Medici, as well as the last chapter, were added later.

An article written by Dino Messina on the daily newspaper Corriere della Sera on 26 of May 2013 tells to the readers that the University of Tianjin in China has organized an international congress on Machiavelli and Valdo Spini, a former PSI politician, now part of the PD (democratic party) was invited to chair a ‘Committee for the V centenary of the completing of the Prince.’ At the same time Messina pointed out that in Italy we cannot find money to complete and publish the critical Opera Omnia of Machiavelli, an heroic work carried out  by the small publisher ‘Salerno Editrice.’

Messina add also that two years before a professor of Italian at the Strasbourg University, Emanuele Cutinelli Rendina revealed that the publication of Machiavelli’s diplomatic papers with notes was made possible only thanks to the money provided by a Swiss based foundation!

Machiavelli star in Cina ma non in Italia

But here comes the catch: on the other side of the world, in China, there is a publisher, Jilin Publishing Group, in far away Jilin Province, bordering North Korea, that is completing the translation in Chinese of the  Opera Omnia of the Florentine thinker.

The title of such international meeting, staged on 25-26 May, is : ‘Machiavelli and Modern Politics: a quincentenary celebration.’ Again the story of the 500 years. But even not taking into consideration Valdo Spini, a politician, the academic line up seems indeed impressive: Diego Quaglioni – Università di Trento, James Hankins – University of Harvard, Peter Stacey – UCLA (University of California Los Angeles), Stephen J. Milner – University of Manchester, Valentina Lepri – Villa I Tatti, Nicoletta Marcelli – Villa I Tatti, Mark Jurdjevic – University of York (England).

I tried to locate some news about this event on the Chinese press but I was unable to find anything, which seems to confirm my idea that few Chinese are really interested in Machiavelli at all.

I wrote a comment on Messina’s blog doubting that there could be a sincere interest on Machiavelli in China, because no real connection or discussion with modern society will be allowed, and not doing so the whole matter boil down to an exercise in literary archaeology, or a parade for the made in Italy. Furthermore I was adding that even in Italy only an elite really care about Machiavelli, proof of this fact is the fact that the little money needed to complete our critical Opera Omnia is still missing. On the other hand we spend money to send Valdo Spini to China…

Apparently on this last point I was wrong. On the same blog the politician himself and the Italian Embassy in Beijing commented that no money was paid for his trip, being all provided by the Chinese university of Tianjin. OK, this last accusation I take it back.

With my critical notes I don’t want to spoil this or any other celebration but as far as I am concerned I prefer to wait 2032 – the real 500th years anniversary of the publishing of The Prince – and then drink a glass of Chianti to honour the great soul of the Florentine writer.

 

 

Lavoro, guadagno, spendo, pretendo (I work, I make money, I spend it, I pretend to be served)

The title was a catch-phrase in Italy during the roaring ’70s to describe a self made man, once poor but suddenly become rich, with more than a hint of vulgarity.

A mainland Chinese man, let’s say a local boss, bought a Maserati car in the port city of Qingdao, Shandong Province at 430.000 USD but then dissatisfied with the after sale service he paid a team of men to smash it with sledger hammers in front of a group of puzzled and excited onlookers. He claimed that his new car was rapaired with a second hand replacement by the Maserati dealer. I daresay that this man will soon get into big trouble, the police, the communist party (he is probably a strong local member) will put him under the spotlight. In China no one can buy a Maserati and be completely honest and clean.

The photo (Reuter) is taken from the South China Morning post of 15th of May

Donatella Oliboni elected Chairman of the Hong Kong Foreign Financial Institution Association

Donatella Oliboni, the Hong Kong representative for South East Asia, Japan, Korea and Australasia of the Banca Popolare di Vicenza, has been elected for the seventh time in a row to the position of Chairman of the Hong Kong Foreign Financial Institution Association. (http://hkffia.org.hk/).

For another year Donatella, a native of Verona, Italy, will chair this influential organization set up by representatives of the most important foreign banks in Hong Kong.  As such Donatella is part of the steering committee (http://www.asianfinancialforum.com/en/info_committee.htm) for the Asian Financial Forum which will be staged in Hong Kong on  13-14 January ’14 ( http://www.asianfinancialforum.com/en/index.htm)

Hear the voice of a thief. That of Alexander Graham Bell.

The real inventor of the telephone was Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci (Florence 1808 – New York 1889)

Meucci filed a Patent Caveat in 1871 (5 years before Bell) because he had not sufficient money to pay for a full patent. His notebooks went missing, sold for a few dollars by his wife while he was sick, and then was demonstrated beyond doubt that they ended up in the hands of a friend of Alexander Bell and he had access to them. Here we have not a case of two people coming up with the same idea at the same time, but rather the stealing of a brilliant idea.  There was a famous trial but by then Bell, a skilled but ungrateful businessman had  already set up a company with branches all over the world. The judge, contrary to common expectations, and against evidence ruled in favour of the Scottish turned-Canadian millionare without granting a compensation to the poor Italian immigrant.

There was a ruling by the US Congress in 2002 correcting that sentence. For those who thinks that I am boasting this out of pure chauvinism here is an article published by the Guardian on 22 June 2002, written by Rory Carroll:

Historians and Italian-Americans won their battle to persuade Washington to recognise a little-known mechanical genius, Antonio Meucci, as a father of modern communications, 113 years after his death.

The vote by the House of Representatives prompted joyous claims in Meucci’s homeland that finally Bell had been outed as a perfidious Scot who found fortune and fame by stealing another man’s work.

Calling the Italian’s career extraordinary and tragic, the resolution said his “teletrofono”, demonstrated in New York in 1860, made him the inventor of the telephone in the place of Bell, who had access to Meucci’s materials and who took out a patent 16 years later.

“It is the sense of the House of Representatives that the life and achievements of Antonio Meucci should be recognised, and his work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged,” the resolution stated.

Bell’s immortalisation in books and films has rankled with generations of Italians who know Meucci’s story. Born in 1808, he studied design and mechanical engineering at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, and as a stage technician at the city’s Teatro della Pergola developed a primitive system to help colleagues communicate.

In the 1830s he moved to Cuba and, while working on methods to treat illnesses with electric shocks, found that sounds could travel by electrical impulses through copper wire. Sensing potential, he moved to Staten Island, near New York City, in 1850 to develop the technology.

When Meucci’s wife, Ester, became paralysed he rigged a system to link her bedroom with his neighbouring workshop and in 1860 held a public demonstration which was reported in New York’s Italian-language press.

In between giving shelter to political exiles, Meucci struggled to find financial backing, failed to master English and was severely burned in an accident aboard a steamship.

Forced to make new prototype telephones after Ester sold his machines for $6 to a secondhand shop, his models became more sophisticated. An inductor formed around an iron core in the shape of a cylinder was a technique so sophisticated that it was used decades later for long-distance connections.

Meucci could not afford the $250 needed for a definitive patent for his “talking telegraph” so in 1871 filed a one-year renewable notice of an impending patent. Three years later he could not even afford the $10 to renew it.

He sent a model and technical details to the Western Union telegraph company but failed to win a meeting with executives. When he asked for his materials to be returned, in 1874, he was told they had been lost. Two years later Bell, who shared a laboratory with Meucci, filed a patent for a telephone, became a celebrity and made a lucrative deal with Western Union.

Meucci sued and was nearing victory – the supreme court agreed to hear the case and fraud charges were initiated against Bell – when the Florentine died in 1889. The legal action died with him.

 

 

Beppe Grillo – The Talking Cricket

 

 

The talking Cricket Il Grillo Parlante is a fictional character created by Carlo Collodi which appeared in his 1883’s book The Adventures of Pinocchio (Le avventure di Pinocchio). It did represent the conscience of that boy, Pinocchio, and indeed of every good boy.

In Italian cricket is translated into ‘grillo’ like Beppe Grillo, the former comic that has transformed himself into a powerful Italian political leader. A case of reality more fictional than fiction. His ‘Five Stars’ movement can now be considered the largest single political party in Italy and he achieved this goal by speaking directly to the people in the squares of Italy and through his blog: http://www.beppegrillo.it.

He is still dismissed as joke by most political analysts and commentators but they may be proven wrong at the end. He cannot be said to sit on the right, left or center of the political spectrum, because he collects votes from all sort of people using two powerful weapons: common sense and truth. Italian citizens know how to use reason and intelligence to form their own ideas.

The big question remains if this wide consensus could be transformed into good deeds, and so far there is no hint that this will ever happen. In the land of Machiavelli we should remember that when a prophet is not capable to deliver and to defend himself and his followers, will certainly face ruin.

As a small example of his powerful rhetoric I would like to offer a short translation of his latest blog. This sober assessment was posted yesterday evening, May 1st, 2013 in which he criticize the tired form of celebrations connected to May Day, and what a ‘ship of fools’ seems to be our Nation.

May Day used to be workers day. Now we should call it unemployed day and the day of the great concert in Rome. Once upon the time we had the ‘panem and circenses’, now we are left with the ‘circenses’ only. But only once a year, in the tribune no longer sit Caligula or Diocletian, but the three representatives of the Trade Unions. Every minute in Italy a company close, the official unemployment rate has reached the level of 38.4%. Italy is a Nation of unemployed, retired in waiting, pensioners and emigrants. In the past the boys from the south emigrated to the North, to Milano, Turin, Bologna. Now the boys from the south together with those from the north are going abroad. They are all people with a diploma or with a university degree. It is like bloodletting, an emorragia of intelligence. Italy is the second European Nation after Rumania for the number of émigrés. The country stands on nothing. On empty talking and opposing positions mixing together to protect their own interests. The tax income is falling with the disappearance of companies and workers. On the highways the traffic has decreased by 34% in one year and the restaurants on the same highways (Autogrill) are empty. Italy is grinding to a stop like a giant machinery struck by rust, one cogwheel at a time. Four million civil servants, ninetten million pensioners, half million people living on politics, all this is unsustainable for a country having no growth for the last 15 years, with a GDP falling starting from well before the crisis of 2008. The celebrations of the 1st of May are a tired rite to absolve all those responsible: trade unions, industrialists which are ‘predators’ of public works, political parties. It is a celebration broadcasted on all the main TV channels of Caporetto (the point in 1917 where the Italian front collapsed) and the 8th of September (8 of September, 1943. Italy switched side from Germany to the Allies). The new prime minister ‘Findus’ Letta (meaning frozen tuna…) promises cuts and re-cuts without any money left while in the streets people are dancing. An happy day, for a day, which gives a rancid smell such as the 2nd of November (end of WW1 in Italy) for the workers. The leftist syndicate CGIL said that the nephew of his uncle (meaning Enrico Letta, nephew of Berlusconi’s right arm man Gianni Letta): ‘Did well to touch many points (in his parliamentary speech) which were first raised by our Union; that is a proof of sensitivity and capacity to listen.’ Prosit.

 

 

 

Il primo maggio era la festa dei lavoratori. Ora è la festa dei disoccupati e del concertone a Roma. C’erano un tempo “panem et circences”, sono rimasti i circences, ma solo una volta all’anno con in tribuna, al posto di Caligola o Diocleziano, i reggenti della Triplice Sindacale. Chiude un’azienda al minuto, la disoccupazione giovanile “ufficiale” ha raggiunto il 38,4%. L’Italia è diventata una Nazione di cassintegrati, esodati, disoccupati, precari e emigranti. In passato erano i ragazzi del Sud a emigrare al Nord, a Milano, Torino, Bologna. Adesso i ragazzi del Sud e del Nord emigrano insieme all’estero. Laureati, diplomati. E’ un travaso di sangue, di intelligenze. L’Italia è la seconda nazione europea per numero di emigrati dopo la Romania. Il Paese si regge sul nulla. Chiacchiere e inciucio. Il gettito fiscale e Irpef sta crollando per la scomparsa di aziende e lavoratori dipendenti. Il traffico su strada è diminuito in un anno del 34%, gli autogrill sono deserti. L’Italia si sta fermando come una grande macchina colpita dalla ruggine, un componente dopo l’altro, fino all’immobilità. Quattro milioni di dipendenti pubblici, 19 milioni di pensionati, mezzo milione di persone che vive di politica sono insostenibili per un Paese senza sviluppo da 15 anni, con un Pil in discesa libera ben prima della crisi del 2008. Festeggiare il Primo Maggio è uno stanco rito assolutorio dei responsabili, dei sindacati complici, dei “prenditori” di appalti pubblici di Confindustria, dei partiti che hanno occupato lo Stato. E’ la celebrazione di Caporetto e dell’otto settembre a reti unificate. Capitan findus Letta promette tagli e ritagli senza alcuna copertura economica e in piazza si balla mentre la cassa integrazione sta finendo. Un’allegria di un giorno che ha il profumo forte e rancido del 2 novembre dei lavoratori. La Cgil ha detto che “è un fatto positivo” che il Nipote di suo Zio abbia “toccato molti punti che sono stati sollevati anche dai sindacati”, ciò denota “sensibilità e attenzione all’ascolto”. Prosit.