Marco Girolamo Vida: Difference between revisions

Murray continues, "In the opening lines, Vida tells how he has written this poem, on a subject never before attempted by the poets, at the insistence of [[Federigo Fregoso]], and he expresses the hope that it might afford some relaxation to [[Giuliano de' Medici, Duke of Nemours|Guiliano de Medici]] in the heavy task which he and his brother (Giovanni, later [[Pope Leo X]], a keen chess-player), had undertaken in repelling the French invaders of Italy. V.d. Lasa has shown that the allusions to Italian events point definitively to the early summer of 1513 as the date of the poem. Vida was then aged twenty-three. The aim of the poem is to describe in Virgilian Latin a game of chess played between [[Apollo]] and [[Mercury (mythology)|Mercury]] in the presence of the [[Twelve Olympians|other gods]]. Vida apparently experienced some difficulty in deciding on a suitable classical nomenclature for the [[Bishop (chess)|Bishop]] and [[Rook (chess)|Rook]]. In the earlier version the Bishops are represented as [[centaur]]s with bows and arrows; in later version the Centaurs have disappeared and the Bishop is an [[Archer]]. In the earlier version the Rooks are represented as [[Cyclops]]... In the later version the Rooks appear as warring towers borne upon the backs of [[elephant]]s... Elsewhere in the poem the name ''Elephas'' is used, generally, however, with an allusion to the tower it is supposed to carry on its back... The extraordinary thing is that Vida's choice of names should have caught the popular fancy. All three terms - ''Archer'' for the Bishop, ''Elephant'' and ''Tower (Castle)'' for the Rook - were adopted by players in different parts of [[Western Europe]]. Even the term ''[[Amazons|Amazon]]'', which he used for the [[Queen (chess)|Queen]], was tried by the writers of chess books."<ref> H.J.R. Murray (1913), ''A History of Chess'', page 790-791.</ref>