Re: How do you play Marziano's game?

21
The difference in play has to do with strategy. You want to use your cards to their best advantage. In your favored set of rules, if a player has no Eagles, and Aeolus will win the trick, then he or she can play it and save Jupiter for when he is needed. But if one has to play Jupiter, as the highest member of the continuation of Eagles, then one is stuck, even if one could have won with Aeolus.

Re: How do you play Marziano's game?

22
One thing that strikes me as surprising is the durability of Michelino's cards. Decembrio notes that they cost 1500 gold ducats. One would assume that they would rarely be played and kept only for display yet Decembrio notes that it was the duke's favourite game. These cards lasted for over twenty years and was in such a good condition it was considered a gift worthy to a queen. Cards that are damaged or worn can't be repaired or replaced easily without looking out of place with the rest. Could these cards have been painted on wood, metal, or bone?

Re: How do you play Marziano's game?

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Well, I can't guess, Ludophone. Perhaps there is something in Decembrio's language that points to paper; if not, that might also be indicative of something. Another possibility would be parchment stiffened in some way. Pratesi writes about orpelli (gold on parchment) as a major Florentine production of that time, for pictures of saints and so on. In English, Sandy translated one of these esaays, viewtopic.php?p=20183#p20183 and following.

I want not to let another comment of Ross's go by without further notice. Another issue is the one Ross raised about Cupid being more powerful than Jupiter. I take that as Marziano's ironic suggestion of a circularity in the order, not that different from seeing the Fool as both the last card and before the first in tarot, so that the preacher of the Sermones can say it is "nulla" but also put it after the Angel. But that suggestion does not apply to the actual play, in which Cupid is simply the lowest in the hierarchy of deified heroes, and the Fool is even worse off, although he has the advantage, for the player, of serving as a sacrifice.

A more serious problem, it seems to me, is that the cards in Riches and Pleasures are described in less than virtuous ways, while those in Virtues and Continences speak only of their virtues. Marziano wants Venus to be depicted as "in a sufficiently wanton condition, with free-flowing hair, breast and arms exposed, knee bare; in the showing of these, more easily to entice to love". In such condition, in the game she defeats all the Continences except Pallas Athena. In playing the game, the player learns how to use both vice and virtue to their, and his or her, best advantage. Such a realpolitik may or may not be appealing to Filippo, depending on whether he is thinking of this world or the next. But it is not the result that Marziano promised, in which the player will be "aroused to virtue."

Re: How do you play Marziano's game?

24
mikeh wrote: 19 Jan 2019, 03:05 I want not to let another comment of Ross's go by without further notice. Another issue is the one Ross raised about Cupid being more powerful than Jupiter. I take that as Marziano's ironic suggestion of a circularity in the order, not that different from seeing the Fool as both the last card and before the first in tarot, so that the preacher of the Sermones can say it is "nulla" but also put it after the Angel. But that suggestion does not apply to the actual play, in which Cupid is simply the lowest in the hierarchy of deified heroes, and the Fool is even worse off, although he has the advantage, for the player, of serving as a sacrifice.
I have thought about two possibilities regarding Cupid being higher than Jupiter. First is that it is entirely allegorical and not ludic. This is just a reference to Jupiter's penchant for philandery.

Alternatively, it is possible that if both cards are played in the same trick, Cupid wins. In some Austrian tarock games, if all three trull cards are played in the same trick, the pagat wins despite being the lowest. I believe this to be an independent invention. If it existed in Marziano's game, it would occur more frequently as only two cards are needed for this occurrence. I think it was inspired by a desire to rectify the fact that whoever got awarded the highest trump has an unfair advantage as it is impossible to lose a trick with it. With the highest trump now vulnerable like the rest, the game appears more balanced.

Re: How do you play Marziano's game?

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Pratesi's 1999 note on Marziano, at http://www.naibi.net/A/70-MARZI-Z.pdf, does not have a lot to say about how the game would be played. He does comment on the issues we've been discussing, very briefly, in the context of examining how many cards the deck would have in total:
Esaminiamo allora la possibile composizione di questo insolito mazzo, pur riconoscendo che questa discussione è inevitabilmente di carattere speculativo. Al di sopra delle carte numerali (non esplicitamente citate ma necessariamente presenti per rendere possibile la gerarchia discendente e ascendente indicata) ci sono le figure (di cui qui solo i re sono
ricordati in maniera esplicita). Per le carte superiori, si ha un cambiamento di ruolo e qui anche di seme; però a tutti gli effetti è come se si prolungasse ognuno dei 4 semi con altre 4 carte superiori, in maniera in fondo non dissimile da come nel tradizionale mazzo di tarocchi le quattro carte figurate all’interno di ogni seme superano le dieci carte numerali.

Il meccanismo con cui questi trionfi sono stati inseriti nelle carte da gioco corrisponde a un’aggiunta di figure superiori in numero uguale per ogni seme ma probabilmente in modo da poter formare un quinto seme autonomo. Perché un sistema del genere funzioni esattamente, il numero complessivo delle carte deve essere multiplo sia di 4 che di 5, cioè di 20. Limitandosi a numeri plausibili, si può iniziare con semi di nove carte numerali e tre figure, il che ci ricorderebbe mazzi oggi comuni in Spagna; con l’aggiunta di altre tre figure superiori per seme si potrebbe ottenere un quinto seme di dodici trionfi, e un mazzo completo di 60 carte.

Ma più plausibile si presenta l’alternativa successiva, di dieci carte numerali e sei figure, per esempio personaggi sia maschili che femminili, come citati già da Giovanni da Rheinfelden e come sarebbero in parte conservati nel noto mazzo Visconti di Modrone; quattro carte superiori aggiunte per seme, come nel mazzo di Marziano, potrebbero alternativamente costituire il quinto seme dei trionfi per un totale di 80 carte, come già indicato da Michael Dummett (4). Di qui si sarebbe potuto ottenere in seguito il mazzo standard dei tarocchi eliminando un paio di figure e “promuovendone” sei dalle carte superiori dei quattro semi al nuovo seme dei trionfi.
___________________
4. M. Dummett, "A Comment on Marziano". The Playing-Card XVIII (1989) 73-75.
And in English
Let us then examine the possible composition of this unusual deck, while recognizing that this debate is inevitably speculative. Above the numeral cards (not explicitly cited but necessarily present to make possible the descending and ascending hierarchy indicated) there are the courts (of which only the kings are explicitly mentioned here). For the higher cards, there is a change of role and here also of suit; however, in all respects it is as if each of the 4 suits were extended with 4 other superior cards, basically not dissimilar to how in the traditional tarot deck the four court cards depicted within each suit exceed the ten numeral cards.

The mechanism by which these triumphs were inserted into the playing cards corresponds to an addition of higher figures in equal numbers for each suit but probably so as to form a fifth autonomous suit. In order for such a system to work exactly, the total number of cards must be multiple of both 4 and 5, that is 20. By confining oneself to plausible numbers, we can start with suits of nine number cards and three courts, which would remind us of decks today common in Spain; with the addition of three more superior figures per suit one could obtain a fifth suit of twelve triumphs, and a complete deck of 60 cards.

But the more plausible alternative is the next alternative, of ten number cards and six figures, for example male and female personages, as already mentioned by John of Rheinfelden and as would be partly preserved in the well known Visconti di Modrone deck; four top cards added per suit, as in Marziano's deck, could alternatively constitute the fifth suit of the triumphs for a total of 80 cards, as already indicated by Michael Dummett 4. From here the standard tarot deck could be obtained by eliminating a couple of figures and "promoting" them from the top cards of the four suits to the new suit of triumphs.
___________________
4. M. Dummett, "A Comment on Marziano". The Playing-Card XVIII (1989) 73-75.
Then there is his conclusion. Only the last paragraph is of revelance, but since it is short I will give the whole thing
CONCLUSIONI
Le informazioni ricavabili da questa testimonianza sull’origine dei tarocchi hanno un’importanza
considerevole. A differenza di altri casi, qui siamo davvero vicini all’origine dei tarocchi, tanto vicini che oggi qualsiasi indicazione di epoca precedente non può essere considerata che a livello di ipotesi.

L’iconografia dei primi tarocchi Visconti è particolare e, insieme alla selezione dei personaggi “deificati” in questo mazzo straordinario, meriterebbe un’analisi approfondita da parte degli esperti.

Nelle discussioni in corso fra gli storici delle carte da gioco, questa testimonianza si pone a supporto di un ampliamento del mazzo comune per dar luogo ai tarocchi: i trionfi poterono nascere come estensione verso l’alto di una gerarchia già presente all’interno dei quattro semi tradizionali e che avrebbe finito con il produrre una gerarchia indipendente, valida solo all’interno delle figure superiori aggiunte. Probabilmente fu necessario un certo tempo perché le figure “trionfali” si separassero nettamente, come immagini e come funzioni, dalle figure superiori dei quattro semi.
In English
CONCLUSIONS
The information obtained from this testimony on the origin of the tarot is of considerable importance. Unlike other cases, here we are really close to the origin of the tarot, so close that today any indication of the previous era can not be considered that hypothesis level.

The iconography of the first Visconti tarots is particular and, together with the selection of the "deified" personages in this extraordinary deck, deserves in-depth analysis by the experts.

In the discussions underway among historians of playing cards, this testimony stands in support of an expansion of the common deck to give rise to the tarot: the triumphs could be born as an upward extension of a hierarchy already present within the four traditional suits and that would end up producing an independent hierarchy, valid only within the added top figures. Probably it took some time for the "triumphal" figures to clearly separate, as images and functions, from the upper figures of the four suits.
My position relative to this one is that it is, as he says, a speculative interpretation, but I would add that it is only one of at least two possibilities, of which the one Ross and Steve are promoting is the other. So when he says, "however, in all respects it is as if each of the 4 suits were extended with 4 other superior cards, basically not dissimilar to how in the traditional tarot deck the four court cards depicted within each suit exceed the ten numeral cards," that, too, is speculative and does not exclude other possibilities.

It is of interest that he cites Dummett. I had not remembered Dummett's note from the issue after Franco's original article (http://trionfi.com/earliest-tarot-pack). So I dug it up (the major benefit these days from joining the IPCS is the access to back issues). Here is that note, in its entirety:
A Comment on Marziano
Dear Sir,
Franco Pratesi continues to enthral us with discoveries that frequently dis-lodge what had seemed probable options. His identification of the pack reportedly made for Filippo Maria Visconti by Marziano (detto) da Tortona with that painted for him by Michelino da Besozza (`Italian Cards: New Discoveries, No.10', The Playing Card, Vol.XVIII, 1989, pp.28-38) clears [end of 73] up one notorious mystery, and presents us with further problems. Time is needed to digest this new information, but I should like to make some preliminary comments.

Were the gods trump cards?
This is the most important question: on it depends the validity of Signor Pratesi's use of the pack to push back the invention of the Tarot pack to the second decade of the century. This interpretation is only weakly supported by Marcello's reference to the cards as triumphi (ibid., p.31), since his under-standing of them may have been anachronistic. Their assignment to suits (p.34) suggests that the gods were merely extra court cards, ranking above the Kings. Their ranking in order (p.35) suggests the contrary, that they func-tioned as genuine trumps. Marziano's statement (p.34) that they beat the Kings and pip cards (ranks of birds) could be read either way. If they were trumps, their assignment to the suits is pointless; if they were superior court cards, their ranking among themselves is pointless. Of the two hypotheses, Signor Pratesi's, that they were trumps in our sense, seems the more probable. But' there are other possibilities: for instance, that, when a King or pip card was led, the trick could be won by a god only if it was' of that suit, but that, when a god was led, it could be beaten by any higher god. If this seems complicated, we should remember that evolution sometimes goes in 'the direction 'of simplicity; we should recall also the complicated rules about the trump suit in Kamoffel. This hypothesis would make Marziano's game ancestral to Tarot, but at a considerable remove.

The number of cards
Marziano's remarks about ranking (p.34) surely make it certain that each suit contained several pip cards. The natural hypothesis would be that each contained ten. it is unclear why Signor Pratesi proposes only nine (p.35): there is little evidence for the omission of the lOs from XV-century Italian packs. It is not only Marziano (p.34.) but Marcello (p.31) who mentions only Kings but no other ordinary court figures: it is therefore a real possibility that the pack numbered 16 + 44 = 60 cards. If, as Signor Pratesi conjectures (p.36), other court figures were tacitly presupposed in these accounts, their number would surely be three rather than four, as Pratesi thinks. This would give a total of 16 + 52 = 58 cards. (A third possibility is mentioned below.)

The number of trumps
If the gods were trumps, then it is certain that there were sixteen trumps in Marziano's pack. Pratesi regards this as supporting conjectures by Ron [end of 74] Decker and John Berry that certain surviving hand-painted packs originally had fewer than twenty-one trumps (p37). That theory is not intrinsically implausible; but it was linked by its proponents with the suggestion that the subjects depicted by the secondary artist (Temperance, Fortitude, Star, Moon, Sun and World) in the `Visconti-Sforza' pack were not originally meant to be included. This is hard to sustain; whatever doubts may be raised about the identification of the World in the Visconti di Modrone pack, it unquestionably included Fortitude, together with the three theological virtues; and it cannot be that all the virtues were dropped when the Visconti-Sforza pack was first designed, since Justice is by the primary artist. That version of the theory therefore remains, to my mind, as implausible as ever. We know, however, that the composition of the Visconti di Modrone pack did not conform to what later came to be standard: the hypothesis that it contained only sixteen trumps is accordingly a real possibility. If so, then the trump sequence was of the same length as each of the suits; and this would give a simple reason why sixteen was chosen as the number of trumps. This suggests the faint possibility that, in Marziano's pack, too, each suit had both male and female court figures for each of the three ranks, making a total of 16 + 64 = 80 cards altogether.

Prince Fibbia
Signor Pratesi has certainly pushed the probable date of the invention of the Tarot pack considerably further back; but he oversimplifies when he says (p.37) of Prince Fibbia that 'he was generally discarded as a candidate [for having invented the game] for being too early'. I do not recall anyone but myself who has rejected his claim on any but the false ground of the non-existence of his portrait. Part of my ground was that the evidence is so late: a portrait dating, I suppose, from the later XVII century is hardly strong ground for an event of the early XV century. It testifies to a family tradition; but a conjecture, intended to explain the presence of the Fibbia arms on some Bolognese cards, might have solidified into certainty. My original objection, in The Game of Tarot, was that Prince Fibbia was too early to have invented the game of tarocchini, as the inscription states. I have for long abandoned this view: if he had been the inventor of tarocchi in general, the word tarocchini, still in use for the only form of the game then known in Bologna (Minchiate excepted), might well have been employed in a XVII-century Bolognese inscription. It therefore already seemed to me possible, before Signor Pratesi's exciting discovery, that Prince Fibbia might really have been the inventor; but the evidence remains exceedingly flimsy.
Michael Dummett [end of 75]
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-X6NwL-l3M_s/ ... e-001a.jpg
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-epXMLawrGZw/ ... e-001a.jpg
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UqRoERC_1Us/ ... e-001a.jpg

It seems to me that Franco in 1999 is clarifying what he wrote in 1989, in consideration of Dummett's remark that "Marziano's statement (p.34) that they beat the Kings and pip cards (ranks of birds) could be read either way. If they were trumps, their assignment to the suits is pointless; if they were superior court cards, their ranking among themselves is pointless." He is saying that both of these eventualities might be true. The other possibility that Dummett raises, "when a King or pip card was led, the trick could be won by a god only if it was of that suit, but that, when a god was led, it could be beaten by any higher god", is indeed another possible rule, one I had not thought of. In that it allows for both of the alternatives he saw as exclusive earlier, it seems to contradict what he said earlier.

The question of the number of cards is relevant to the rules of play only insofar as it raises the question of what is to be done with the remainder after all the cards have been dealt equally. A 48 card deck does not divide evenly by 5, and an 80 card deck does not divide evenly by 3. The advantage of 60 cards, as in Dummett's suggestion of 10 number cards per suit, plus 4 kings, plus the 16, is that it allows for the game to be played by any number of players up to 6, with no remainder. But I suppose the remainder could have just sat on the table, unobserved by any player.

The part about Prince Fibbia reminds us that we cannot totally exclude the possibility that Marziano was led to devise his game by knowing or hearing about another game with a permanent trump suit. Also, if Marziano's game led to other games played by similar rules but with different subjects, existing games with trumps may have influenced the choices. But the chances are, as he says, remote. No matter how many testimonies can be produced of a tradition in Bologna of the game's being invented there, if they are after the biography of St. Bernardino that mentions them (unlike earlier biographies), such testimonies are most likely inferences from that one mention. Likewise, Prince Fibbia may have introduced a card game, even the game, into Bologna, but not invented it. Families want to have ancestors famous for something.

Among Pratesi's essays and notes on the Marziano, there is one more, dated 2013, in English at http://trionfi.com/evx-reflection-on-ma ... k-of-cards. It contains more speculations, but nothing new regarding the rules of play that I could see. One point of interest is that he introduces more uncertainty as to the date and place of Marziano's invention. On the one hand, Michelino was not in Milan until 1418. On the other hand, the descriptions of the gods indicate a wide range of sources, and Florence, where Marziano was until 1414, had the most, so perhaps even before 1414, in Florence, is a possibility. However it seems to me that the Visconti library in Pavia also had quite a few, including everything in Petrarch's library except his own works. It is a matter of tracking down odd details in Marziano's descriptions, a thankless task.

I myself would wonder where the detail of Mercury's "galero" comes from. And is it a wide-brimmed hat or just a cap, or else a helmet made of skins, as Wiktionary says for the meaning of "galerus" in Latin? If nothing else, Seznec in Survival of the Pagan Gods, shows a Hellenistic relief of Mercury in a wide-brimmed hat (with wings); he says that such a design was in a widely circulating (and no doubt copied) drawing by Ciriaco d'Ancona, from something from the eastern Mediterranean. The earliest date for that drawing would have been 1422, when Ciriaco returned from a two to three year stay in Constantinople.

Re: How do you play Marziano's game?

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mikeh wrote: 20 Jan 2019, 02:43 The other possibility that Dummett raises, "when a King or pip card was led, the trick could be won by a god only if it was of that suit, but that, when a god was led, it could be beaten by any higher god", is indeed another possible rule, one I had not thought of. In that it allows for both of the alternatives he saw as exclusive earlier, it seems to contradict what he said earlier.
I have thought about this, but my inspiration came from another pack which was one of Dummett's unsolved problems, the ‘Tarot à 73 cartes’ by Piatnik from the 1930s. It's like an Austrian tarock deck but with 40 trumps alternatingly numbered in red or black. I speculated that if a black suit is led, a red trump would be unable to take the trick. If trumps are led, any higher trump can beat it regardless of colour. I have never played minchiate but John McLeod reported in the Journal that players hoard high trumps for the endgame. I think it is more dangerous in my speculated game to not play such valuable cards earlier as there is a chance the player may be forced to slough it if he runs out of trumps of the right colour.

I ran into problems when trying to apply this to Marziano's game. The suited trumps are too few in number to the suit it is attached to (4:11). Being split four ways weakens their usefulness as well. When can you play a suited trump?

First method: if eagles is led, the next player can immediately play an eagle trump. This will however mean that eagle trumps are nothing but court cards in the context of that trick, not very interesting. What would have been the point of the kings?

Second method: you can only play a suited trump when you are void of pips and king of that suit. This is more plausible but you might end up not having any trumps for that suit since there's only four of them. Any game with five or more players means that someone will definitely not have a trump for a particular suit.

Re: How do you play Marziano's game?

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mikeh wrote: 20 Jan 2019, 02:43 On the other hand, the descriptions of the gods indicate a wide range of sources, and Florence, where Marziano was until 1414, had the most, so perhaps even before 1414, in Florence, is a possibility. However it seems to me that the Visconti library in Pavia also had quite a few, including everything in Petrarch's library except his own works. It is a matter of tracking down odd details in Marziano's descriptions, a thankless task.

I myself would wonder where the detail of Mercury's "galero" comes from. And is it a wide-brimmed hat or just a cap, or else a helmet made of skins, as Wiktionary says for the meaning of "galerus" in Latin? If nothing else, Seznec in Survival of the Pagan Gods, shows a Hellenistic relief of Mercury in a wide-brimmed hat (with wings); he says that such a design was in a widely circulating (and no doubt copied) drawing by Ciriaco d'Ancona, from something from the eastern Mediterranean. The earliest date for that drawing would have been 1422, when Ciriaco returned from a two to three year stay in Constantinople.
It's not as thankless or difficult as it might seem. Marziano's primary source is Boccaccio, Genealogia deorum gentilium (GDG). That is always the first place to look for the clarification of Marziano's terse allusions, as well as the iconography. Boccaccio himself usually provides the ultimate sources in classical or medieval literature, or his living expert, Leontius Pilatus.

Mercury's galero is explained in GDG Book II, chapter 7, and again in III, 20. The ultimate source is the first century author Statius, in his poem Thebaid, I, line 305.

Also, the library at Pavia possessed a copy of GDG, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b ... checontact

The first complete English translation of GDG is being done by Jon Solomon of the University of Illinois, for the Harvard UP "I Tatti Renaissance Library" series. So far he has published up to Book 10 (of 15). The only other complete translations are a French one of 1498, and an Italian one of 1547. Both are fine translations, although the French one is in a French gothic font that makes it hard to read at first if you aren't used to it.

Solomon edition, vol. I, pp. 204/5 - "Illi insuper Statius galerus addidir dicens, 'Obnuitque comes et temperat astra galero", etc.
"In addition, Statius gave him a cap, saying 'He covered his hair and tempered the stars with his cap." (First Mercury)

The other passage mentioning Mercury's galero, in a longer moralization, is on pp. 372/3. (Third Mercury)

Ways to read GDG -

Genealogia deorum gentilium, digital Latin text in PDF based on critical text of 1951
https://www.oeaw.ac.at/kal/mythos/

https://www.oeaw.ac.at/kal/mythos/Bocc01.pdf
https://www.oeaw.ac.at/kal/mythos/Bocc02.pdf
https://www.oeaw.ac.at/kal/mythos/Bocc03.pdf
etc. until …
https://www.oeaw.ac.at/kal/mythos/Bocc15.pdf

Two very good translations of all 15 books, the first French, the second Italian. The first full English translation is being done by the American Jon Solomon. Two volumes of this have appeared, containing Books I-V (in 2011) and Books VI-X (in 2017) respectively.

Anonymous French translation, 1498
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k ... rk=42918;4

Italian transaltion of Giuseppe Betussi, 1547
https://archive.org/details/geneologiad ... _0/page/n3
Bibliotdeca Virtuale On-Line searchable digital text
http://bivio.filosofia.sns.it/bvWorkTOC ... iaDegliDei

Statius -

Paret Atlantiades dictis genitoris et inde
summa pedum propere plantaribus inligat alis
obnubitque comas et temperat astra galero.
305

"Obedient to his father’s word the grandson of Atlas straightaway fastens on his ankles the winged sandals, and with wide hat veils his locks and tempers the brilliance of the stars."

Statius, "Thebaid", translation J. H. Mozley, p. 363
http://www.archive.org/stream/statiusst ... 2/mode/2up

Main places in GDG to look up -

All Jupiters, Venuses, and Mercuries are important. The most important of each of the others are in bold face.

1. Jove-Jupiter
1st Jupiter
II, ii
2nd Jupiter
V, i
3rd Jupiter
XI, i

2. Juno
VIIII, i


3. Minerva
1st Minerva
II, iii
2nd Minerva
IIII, lxiiii
3rd Minerva
V, xlviiii

4th Minerva
VII, xxxi

4. Venus
1st Venus, The Great
III, xxii
2nd Venus, Mother of Cupid
III, xxiii
3rd Venus
XI, iiii

5. Apollo
1st Apollo
III, xviiii
2nd Apollo
V, iii


6. Neptune
X, i


7. Diana
1st Diana
II, vi
2nd Diana
V, ii


8. Bacchus
1st Liber
II, xi
Bacchus
V, xxv


9. Mercury
1st Mercury
II, vii
2nd Mercury
II, xii
3rd Mercury
III, xx

4th Mercury
VII, xxxiiii
5th Mercury
VII, xxxvi
6th Mercury
XII, lxii


10. Mars
VIIII, iii


11. Vesta
VIII, iii


12. Ceres
1st Ceres
III, iiii
2nd Ceres
VIII, iiii


13. Hercules
1st Hercules
II, viiii
2nd Hercules
V, xlvi
3rd Hercules
VII, xxxii
4th Hercules
XIII, i


14. Æolus
XIII, xviiii


15. Daphne
VII, xxviiii


16. Cupid
1st Cupid
II, xiii
2nd Cupid
III, xxiiii
3rd Cupid, son of Mars
VIIII, iiii

Amor, son of Venus
XI, v

ADDED - here is the money quote from Boccaccio, the sixth Mercury, Book XII, chapter 62. Bold shows the common vocabulary and order of ideas. Solomon hasn't got here yet, so I give both French and Italian translations, and my own reading.

Marziano -

Galero tegitur, quod adversus plurimas pestes aeloquentia hominem tueatur.
He is covered with a cap, because eloquence guards a man against many evils.

Boccaccio GDG XII, 62

Galerio quippe tegitur Mercurius, ut ostendatur quod adversus invidie fulmina eloquentia valido tegumento servetur.

Tueor and servo are synonyms.

1498 French -
Mercure est couvert dung grant chapeau pour monstrer que eloquence est gardee par couverture puissante contre les fouldres denvie .

1547 Italian -
Mercurio è coperta col capello ; per dimostrare, che contra i fulmini dell’invidia, la eloquenza con forte coperta si conserva .

Mercury is covered with a skullcap, so as to show that, against the darts of ill will, eloquence is protected by a strong covering.
Image

Re: How do you play Marziano's game?

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Thanks for the references, Ross. Boccaccio's Genealogies was one of the the first things I thought of, years ago, but when I looked for it on WorldCat no English translation turned up. I didn't think to check again, or for anything in modern Italian or French. "Skullcap" seems like a good translation for "galerus", and not "galero" because in Italian that means a wide-brimmed cardinal's hat.

Ludophone: yes, that business about only being able to play a triumph of the same color creates difficulties for Marziano's game, and indeed for a 22 triumph game, too, I would think. But that isn't how you play Marziano's game, of course. in all these

Ludophone says,
I have never played minchiate but John McLeod reported in the Journal that players hoard high trumps for the endgame.
I have never even played tarot, but I would think that the same would apply there. That's the strategy issue I was referring to:
if you have to play a triumph, because it's all you've got in the suit led, you can't hoard it. Please let me know if I am wrong.

Re: How do you play Marziano's game?

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Another important difference between the two games, where the gods are considered, in the game, as extensions of the four orders of birds and where they are not, has to do with disqualifications. It is not hard to make a mistake in the former game, forgetting which god goes with which suit. In that case, in the later rules, the player forfeits the hand, a rather hefty penalty. That is why the tricks are kept track of individually, each crossing the trick won previously. Looking at variations rules, I noticed that in some places the penalty is merely a hefty deduction.

Another issue is whether there was a remainder after the deal and if so whether the dealer picked it up and discarded the same number from his hand. From what John of Rheinfelden says about the number 60, I would infer that it was not customary to leave a remainder at all. Arne Jönsson in “Card-playing as a Mirror of Society. On Johannes of Rheinfelden's Ludus cartularum moralisatus,” (in O. Ferm, & V. Honemann (Eds.), Chess and Allegory in the Middle Ages, Sällskapet Runica et Mediaevalia, Stockholm, 2005, pp. 359-371), says:
He [John] has several reasons for recommending the 60 card pack. For in- [end of p. 369] stance, that pack is much more flexible when it comes to the number of players, since 60 can be equally divided more times than 52. With 60 cards, you can have 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, or 60 players, i.e. you have 11 alternatives; with 52 cards there are only five options.
Since 10 players or more is unrealistic, 60 cards gives all options between 2 and 6, whereas 52 only gives two of them (2 and 4). I infer from this that it was not considered desirable for there to be a remainder after an equal number had been dealt to all players. If so, this will be particularly limiting for a 78 card deck, a big reason why a remainder would be provided for in the game called tarocchi. In Marziano's game, a 60 card deck could be accomplished by having 40 number cards plus 4 kings plus 16 gods (that was Dummett's main suggestion). Given that three person games would certainly have been common (or 2 persons with a "dead" hand), that is certainly a reason for preferring 60 to 80. Added later: It is true that you can do a 3 person game by removing 2 number cards from each suit (80-8=72), but that's something of a bother, unless you have handy 2 packs of equal prestige.

There is also the reasonable possibility of a 48 card deck, which would allow the same options except not 5 players. That would mean 7 plus 1 in each regular suit, making for 16 virtue-tending birds, 16 vice-tending ones, and 16 gods. All things considered, however, a 60 card pack seems preferable, because it is of minor importance to the allegory how many birds there are per suit, and more important that the game be open to 5 players. Also, in practice such a deck seems rather short for much of a game for 6 players (8 cards per player vs. 10), which also seems like a useful number to have available. Finally, there is John's recommendation, and the allegorical significance of 60 generally. 60 is a hallowed number in geometry. calendars, and probabl other things.

Re: How do you play Marziano's game?

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mikeh wrote: 21 Jan 2019, 10:19 Thanks for the references, Ross. Boccaccio's Genealogies was one of the the first things I thought of, years ago, but when I looked for it on WorldCat no English translation turned up. I didn't think to check again, or for anything in modern Italian or French. "Skullcap" seems like a good translation for "galerus", and not "galero" because in Italian that means a wide-brimmed cardinal's hat.
I highly recommend Jon Solomon's edition. It has facing-page, Latin-English format, like all the I Tatti series (and Loeb Classical Library before that), which makes it easy to compare the original with the translation. This allows comparison with Marziano's vocabulary. I have contacted Prof. Solomon to ask his opinion on Marziano's use of Boccaccio. Solomon appears to be the only scholar who has worked on a complete translation since the 16th century.

For the translation of "galerus" in Marziano, it surely requires a note, since whatever it meant in classical Latin, it did come to mean something different in the middle ages, as shown in the various depictions of Mercury with such a hat.

ADDED - just looked at Seznec, illustrations of Mercury on page 235. That strange cap with a forward point, and wings, seems canonical. This must be the galerus that anybody thought of when reading about Mercury.
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