Francesco Giammaria was born in Anagni, in the province of Frosinone, Lazio, in the hills ca. 70 km south-east of Rome, where he studied and learned Latin at the Diocesan Seminary. At the time of the composition of Capitolium Novum he worked for the Ministero delle Comunicazioni in Rome (Bettegazzi, Lamers and Reitz-Joosse 2019: 154, n. 1). He participated at least twice, without success, in the prestigious Certamen Hoefftianum (van Binnebeke 2020: 299-300, 302). Little else is known about his life.

Of the three poems in FLT, one (Capitolium Novum) was published separately as Giammaria (1933). All three poems were published together in Tria Carmina (Giammaria 1934). The collection addresses the historical, architectural and, more superficially, socio-economic development of Rome and Italy under the Fascist regime. 1000 copies of this collection were printed.

Bibliography

Latin texts

Giammaria, Francesco. 1933. Capitolium novum: carmen decennale. Rome: typ. Novissima.

———. 1934. Tria Carmina. Rome: Ex tipis novissima.

Secondary sources

Bettegazzi, Nicolò, Han Lamers, and Bettina Reitz-Joosse. 2019. ‘Viewing Rome in the Latin Literature of the Ventennio Fascista: Francesco Giammaria’s Capitolium Novum’. Fascism 8 (2): 153–78.

Binnebeke, Xavier van. 2020. ‘Hoeufft’s Legacy: Neo-Latin Poetry in the Archive of the Certamen Poeticum Hoeufftianum (1923–1943)’. In Studies in the Latin Literature and Epigraphy of Italian Fascism, edited by Han Lamers, Bettina Reitz-Joosse, and Valerio Sanzotta, 245–325. Supplementa Humanistica Lovaniensia 46. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

 Hylke de Boer