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Third dialogue<br />
POLIINNIO. That magister I do not care for. In our misguided and lawless<br />
age, it is attributed to any barber, rag picker or sow-gelder as often as<br />
to my peers. That is why we have the advice: nolite vocari Rabi [Be ye not<br />
called Rabbi] 1<br />
GERVASIO. Then how do you wish me to call you? Do you fancy ‘most<br />
reverend’?<br />
POLIINNIO. Illud est presbiterale et clericum [That is for clerics and<br />
priests].<br />
GERVASIO. Do you feel like ‘most illustrious’?<br />
POLIINNIO. Cedant arma togae [arms give way to the toga]. 2 That title<br />
befits knights as well as the purple-clad. 3<br />
GERVASIO. And ‘Caesarean majesty’, hm?<br />
POLIINNIO. Quae Caesaris Caesari [Give unto Caesar what is<br />
Caesar’s]. 4<br />
GERVASIO. Then take domine [Lord]!, take ‘thunderer’, ‘divum Pater’<br />
[father of the Gods]! To come back to us: why are you so late?<br />
POLIINNIO. I think the others are held back by some business. As for<br />
myself, in order not to waste the day away without tracing a line, 5 I dedicated<br />
myself to contemplating that symbol of the globe commonly dubbed<br />
a world map.<br />
GERVASIO. What on earth have you to do with a world map?<br />
POLIINNIO. I am contemplating all the parts of the earth, climes,<br />
provinces and regions that I have traversed ideally in spirit, and many also<br />
on foot.<br />
GERVASIO. I should like you to come back a little to yourself, as it seems<br />
to me that is what you need most but worry about the least.<br />
POLIINNIO. Absit verbo invidia [Be it said without boasting] 6 : in this<br />
way, I come to know myself much more effectively.<br />
GERVASIO. And how, pray tell, is that?<br />
POLIINNIO. From the scrutiny of the macrocosm, one can easily arrive<br />
(necessaria deductione facta a simili [having made the necessary deduction<br />
by similitude]) at the knowledge of the microcosm, the most minute parts<br />
of which correspond to parts of the former.<br />
GERVASIO. So that, within you, we will find the moon, Mercury and<br />
other heavenly bodies, as well as France, Spain, Italy, England, Calcutta<br />
and other lands?<br />
1 From Matthew 23, 8. 2 Cicero, fragm. De meo consulatu. 3 Magistrates. 4 Matthew 22, 21.<br />
5 Allusion to the Plinian adage: ‘Nulla dies sine linea.’ 6 Livy IX, 19.<br />
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