Spira Mirabilis (61 page)

1
The principle so picturesquely expressed in the Bernoulli family motto,
In my end is my beginning
.

2
That these recruits were mostly second sons from lesser families makes it likely that some were men of frustrated ambition looking for alternate avenues to power.

3
Senator Tremellius defended the interlopers: ‘Foundation must be dense. Stones closest to God at the summit must be refined. So with the Guild, tiers of rough craftsmen support a school of subtle philosophers.’

4
‘The old authorities never mention the unseen forces that I have shown spin and vitiate and illuminate the world,’ wrote Bernoulli. ‘What other winds and currents did the Ancients fail to discern?’

5
When Bernoulli emerged as a central actor of the Re-formation, a cluster of critics emerged. The naysayers claimed that when he said, ‘Solomon, I have outdone thee!’, he was not comparing his Molè to the Solomon’s Temple but their sorcery. Both men, they whispered, had enslaved the elements to perform their prodigies.

6
So it is said. Owing to the author’s delicate constitution, he has not made the journey south himself. However, every effort has been made to verify the facts of this survey.

7
Their pedigree is, to put it mildly, inauspicious. They are descendants of Greek philosophers and Etruscan slaves – the foothills of nearby Vesuvius were long a favourite haunt of renegade slaves.

8
The last of these tyrants now rules Akka. It is a matter of some controversy whether the Guiscards left voluntarily for the Crusade or were expelled. They have never renounced their claim to Salerno, and the Snake of Asclepius still features in the Guiscard coat of arms.

9
Copho was one of the founders of the Schola Salernitana. Although mythmaking has made him into a cross between Moses and Solomon, he was simply the notary at Salerno’s constitutional congress.

10
As must be apparent by now, argument by analogy is typical of Salerno’s primitive philosophy.

11
According to Fra Copho, ‘The cardinal virtue is Harmony.’ Besides his
Anatome Porci
, Copho’s most influential treatise was the
De Mensurabili Musica
; in this erudite dissection of polyphonic music, he proposed the notation system now used throughout Etruria.

12
There are two errors which the historian must avoid as mariners avoid Scylla and Charybdis. The first is to ascribe contemporary values to our ancestors; the second more grievous error is to speculate on the sundry ways events might have been different. To consider untaken pathways can be a diverting game, but ultimately it is an idle one. History, like a river, chooses the path of least resistance: what is so is so because it must be so.

13
Some have suggested that Bernoulli dissected in order to build better machines, while the Doctors studied man’s humours to become better healers. Some have argued that they failed because they failed to abandon the Curia’s stifling dogmas. Some have contrasted their indolence with our vigour.

14
The failure of this ploy may be why the Sybarites’ descendants are so notoriously inhospitable.

15
This is a simplified retelling of what was the penultimate chapter of a wider conflict between Magna Grecia and the alliance of Etrusca and Carthage. Etrusca sought to dominate the peninsula; Carthage wanted Sicily. After Sybaris fell, the allies promptly went to war.

16
Whence our modern Etruria. It is a diverting game to imagine how Etruria might differ were it known by one of the sonorous old names: Víteliú or Oenotria or Latium or Hesperia or Ausonia or Saturnia Terra or Italia.

17
Self-invited guests invariably stay too long. The Eighth Century was the Radinate’s zenith, a period of expansion in which Byzant was won.

18
Owing to their Grecian heritage all Southerners are dark, but the Sybarites are decidedly so.

19
Even before the occupation, the Etruscan Mysteries cast a taint on Southern Marian practices. Readers are directed to the
Mongrel Madonna: Religious Miscegenation of the Sub-Peninsula
, by this author.

20
Which tradition is faithful to the original faith is a question that once animated Curial scholars – who naturally decided it was theirs. Why fidelity should matter is a mystery to the current author; surely traditions should be judged not by how static they remain but how useful they are?

21
Even today, they carry charred totems of their goddess into battle.

22
This bizarre rite, apparently, recalls a Sybarite revolt when an exasperated governor had all the men blinded.