In Via Ricasoli, there lived a man named Anselmo, who was obsessed with a recurring nightmare: every night, he dreamed of being mauled by a lion. To Anselmo, the lion represented a real and inevitable threat.
One day, while passing by Porta di Balla, he saw two large marble lions ( Marzocco ). He thought that to overcome his fear once and for all, he had to defy the statues themselves. He approached one of the stone lions and, to prove his courage, thrust his hand deep into the sculpture’s wide-open jaws.
However, fate had a cruel sense of irony. A venomous scorpion had hidden inside the marble mouth. As soon as Anselmo reached in, the scorpion stung him. Between the shock and the venom, poor Anselmo died on the spot. His prophecy had come true in the most ironic way possible: he wasn’t killed by a real lion, but by his own superstition—and a tiny scorpion hidden in the stone.
