THE MIRROR OF THE GREAT MAGICIAN MERLIN
Rome thanks to his history is a city full of mysteries and legends. One day while the small Iul roamed the streets with the master and his companions, he found himself at the Palatine hill and it was then that Raphael told the legend of Merlin's magic mirror.
"Many years ago the Janus God built in Rome on the Palatine, a castle with many towers and fifty pavilions entirely of alabaster. In the center there was a huge lake that contained all the fish known to the world. Marbles precious decorated the castle and appeared also bas-reliefs depicting the stories of Aeneas and his descendants. It is also said that there were ten towering bronze doors and a garden full of all types of plant with very rare flowers. The castle was so beautiful that even the great magician Merlin reached Rome to see him and meet the emperor. A surprise, however, awaited him.
The empress was a terrible woman and treacherous! She forced twelve guards to dress as women (to have always the guards under her control) and she had forced the daughter of the king of Germany to dress as knight to escape her persecutors, without that the emperor knew nothing. Instead of protecting the princess, she had been forced to endure those frauds because of the cruel empress.
When Merlin saw men dressed as women and women dressed as men laughed and unfortunately, offended the emperor by refusing to say why so much hilarity. The king then sent him forth from the palace, but shortly after the magician decided to unmask the evil empress. How did he do? Well with a magic potion gave a deer's ability to speak and let him in to the palace.
The animal then shouted:
"Who wears the skirt is not a woman and who is not man by nature, carries the armor!"
The furious Emperor promised to anyone who captured Merlin, guilty of that joke, the hand of his daughter. The magician, at all easy to catch, he let himself take only by the knight-woman for whom he had sympathy. Once in the palace revealed the hoax: told everything was combined by the Empress and how she had forced a princess to make the knight. She with its twelve traitors soldiers were then executed and the emperor married to the princess of Germany.
When it was time to return to his land, Merlin gave the emperor a magic mirror from great power: it will not show the face of who was mirrored, but everything that was important to know of him. Since that time when the king was bothered by enemies, the magic mirror saw them arrive early and the emperor could prepare to receive them.
The emperor grateful to the great wizard, hid the precious gift in secret tower of the Castle, which, however, currently does not exist anymore.
We will never know so if Merlin's Mirror has been destroyed along with the building, or if someone has managed to save it to keep it well hidden from prying eyes."
Bibliography:
"Storie e luoghi segreti di Roma" di Cecilia Gatto Trocchi - Newton Compton Editori -Tradizioni italiane 50 - 2006
FAGR-Editore
Falsi d'Autore Giulio Romano
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