When Pomona had eaten at the Sicilian restaurant below the apartment building she rented in London, the owner had told her that "Italian pasta" was not merely pasta. In Italian, it was called macaroni, meaning food that made people happy. And pasta that made people happy was certainly not the fast-food "spaghetti Bolognese" eaten with pizza during overtime just to fill one's stomach.
Only after arriving in Italy did one realize how many varieties of pasta there were, and how many sauces went with them. Compared with the olive oil bases favored in the south, northern cities like Milan preferred animal fats. The sauce served at this restaurant was made with fresh wild boar, and it happened to be hunting season.
Meat sauce called for broad noodles, because broad noodles held the sauce better. Thin noodles therefore went with meatballs rather than meat sauce. If someone absolutely insisted on having meat sauce with thin noodles, that was fine too. At most, it would be called "American stuff," or served as a local specialty from some small place. It was not like Hawaiian pizza with pineapple, "that sort of thing" which could not be found in Italian pizzerias.
Though "devil" and "Satan" both referred to something tormenting, they were still different. Devil leaned more toward "false gods" or "pagan gods," entities that had once possessed their own sacred principles. Satan meant "opposition" and "hostility," and in apocryphal texts was sometimes treated as a "test."
In the Sistine Chapel ceiling painting depicting Satan tempting Eve to steal the forbidden fruit, Satan did not appear in the form of a snake either. Though his lower body coiled around the tree like a serpent, his upper body remained human.
In another pendentive painting, one called "The Brazen Serpent," the snake still appeared in the