Tertia: navigatio.
The Merchant's Eloquence
Navigation is a form of commerce that requires its own kind of rhetoric, symbolized by Mercury as the patron of merchants and eloquence.
Navigation covers every kind of commercial dealing, whether in buying, selling, exchanging, or trading in domestic or foreign goods. This is most aptly a kind of rhetoric of its own sort, because eloquence is especially necessary for this profession. That is why the one said to preside over eloquence is called Mercury — as it were, the merchants' lord, that is, their Lord.1
The World-Building Power of Trade
Trade penetrates every hidden corner of the earth, forging bonds across nations and languages, and ultimately serves the common good by reconciling peoples and sharing private wealth for public welfare.
It penetrates the secret places of the world, approaches unseen shores, traverses dreadful deserts, and carries on the commerce of human exchange with barbarian nations and unknown languages.2 Its zeal reconciles nations, calms wars, strengthens peace, and turns private goods to the common use of all.
Read the original Latin
Navigatio continet omnem in emendis, vendendis, mutandis, domesticis sive peregrinis mercibus negotiationem. haec rectissime quasi quaedam sui generis rhetorica est, eo quod huic professioni eloquentia maxime sit necessaria. unde et hic qui facundiae praeesse dicitur, Mercurius, quasi mercatorum kirrius, id est, Dominus appellatur. haec secreta mundi penetrat, litora invisa adit, deserta horrida lustrat, et cum barbaris nationibus et linguis incognitis commercia humanitatis exercet. huius studium gentes conciliat, bella sedat, pacem firmat, et privata bona ad communem usum omnium immutat.
Notes
- 1 ↩kirrius is a loanword of uncertain morphology in the manuscript tradition; it is rendered here as 'lord' following the gloss id est Dominus, which interprets it as dominus. The quasi etymological play on mercatorum kirrius is preserved as 'the merchants' lord.'
- 2 ↩cum with ablative rendered as comitative ('with') rather than temporal/causal, following the gloss difficulty note.
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