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Marco Polo, Rustichello of Pisa - The Travels of Marco Polo, 1
THE BOOK OF MARCO POLO.
PROLOGUE.
Great Princes, Emperors, and Kings, Dukes and Marquises, Counts, Knights, and Burgesses! and People
of all degrees who desire to get knowledge of the various races of mankind and of the diversities of the
sundry regions of the World, take this Book and cause it to be read to you. For ye shall find therein all
kinds of wonderful things, and the divers histories of the Great Hermenia, and of Persia, and of the Land
of the Tartars, and of India, and of many another country of which our Book doth speak, particularly and
in regular succession, according to the description of Messer Marco Polo, a wise and noble citizen of
Venice, as he saw them with his own eyes. Some things indeed there be therein which he beheld not; but
these he heard from men of credit and veracity. And we shall set down things seen as seen, and things
heard as heard only, so that no jot of falsehood may mar the truth of our Book, and that all who shall read
it or hear it read may put full faith in the truth of all its contents.
For let me tell you that since our Lord God did mould with his hands our first Father Adam, even until
this day, never hath there been Christian, or Pagan, or Tartar, or Indian, or any man of any nation, who in
his own person hath had so much knowledge and experience of the divers parts of the World and its
Wonders as hath had this Messer Marco! And for that reason he bethought himself that it would be a
very great pity did he not cause to be put in writing all the great marvels that he had seen, or on sure
information heard of, so that other people who had not these advantages might, by his Book, get such
knowledge. And I may tell you that in acquiring this knowledge he spent in those various parts of the
World good six-and-twenty years. Now, being thereafter an inmate of the Prison at Genoa, he caused
Messer Rusticiano of Pisa, who was in the said Prison likewise, to reduce the whole to writing; and this
befell in the year 1298 from the birth of Jesus.
CHAPTER I. HOW THE TWO BROTHERS POLO SET FORTH FROM CONSTANTINOPLE
TO TRAVERSE THE WORLD.
It came to pass in the year of Christ 1260, when Baldwin was reigning at Constantinople,[NOTE 1] that
Messer Nicolas Polo, the father of my lord Mark, and Messer Maffeo Polo, the brother of Messer
Nicolas, were at the said city of CONSTANTINOPLE, whither they had gone from Venice with their
merchants' wares. Now these two Brethren, men singularly noble, wise, and provident, took counsel
together to cross the GREATER SEA on a venture of trade; so they laid in a store of jewels and set forth
from Constantinople, crossing the Sea to SOLDAIA.[NOTE 2]
NOTE 1. - Baldwin II (de Courtenay), the last Latin Emperor of Constantinople, reigned from 1237 to
1261, when he was expelled by Michael Palaeologus.
The date in the text is, as we see, that of the Brothers' voyage across the Black Sea. It stands 1250 in all
the chief texts. But the figure is certainly wrong. We shall see that, when the Brothers return to Venice in
1269, they find Mark, who, according to Ramusio's version, was born after their departure, a lad
of fifteen. Hence, if we rely on Ramusio, they must have left Venice about 1253-54. And we shall see
also that they reached the Volga in 1261. Hence their start from Constantinople may well have occurred
in 1260, and this I have adopted as the most probable correction. Where they spent the interval between
1254 (if they really left Venice so early) and 1260, nowhere appears. But as their brother, Mark the
Elder, in his Will styles himself " whilom of Constantinople," their headquarters were probably
there.
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