THE CHESS:
THE EIGHTH ARTE LIBERALE (LIBERAL ART)

    A ancient encyclopedia in nine books, written in prose and in verses by the Carthaginian Marziano Capella (V century a. C.) with a meaningful and fascinating title "Her wedding of Mercury and the Philology", it brings the classification of the liberal arts (Arti Liberali)
    The Liberal Artsare seven divided in two groups.
    The first group includes the literary arts: grammar, rhetoric, dialectics.
    The second group the scientific arts: arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy.
    All these arts need an intense application of the mental faculties (in opposition to the arts -defined "servili" - that need alone physical application and manual work).
    Thanks to the Neapolitan writer Alessandro Salvio, needs, however, to increase the number of the liberal arts and to also add the chess.
    In fact the book of Salvio, published in 1604, entitles him, with a happy approach, Trattato dell'Inventione et arte liberale del gioco di scacchi, "liberal art of the chess".
    The chess are, therefore, Art worthy of the free mind of the man and, as for her "Philology of Marziano Capella, worthy of immortality.

Carmelo Coco.

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