Quirino Ficari (Montefiascone, 1881 – Pesaro, 1968) was a high-school teacher of Latin and Greek (Eberle 1961:204). He completed his studies in 1909 and began his teaching career in the same year; from 1929 to 1951 he taught at the Royal High-school “T. Mamiani” (Regio Liceo T. Mamiani) in Pesaro (Cassa di Risparmio 1986: 179-181). Ficari was a prolific author of Latin works in both prose and verse. His Latin production was part of a wider revival of Neo-Latin poetry in early-twentieth century Italy, which was fuelled and inspired by the Latin poetry of Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912) (see Paradisi and Traina 2007: 137-138). Ficari himself occasionally translated Pascoli’s Latin poems (e.g. Ficari 1928). Between 1923 and 1938, Ficari submitted poems, some of which eulogized the Fascist regime, for each edition of the Certamen Hoeufftianum, though without success (see van Binnebeke 2020: 250-251n27). His Latin texts also did receive awards in other certamina of the period, such as the Certamen Locrense (see van Binnebeke 2020: 250-251n27) or the Concorso nazionale di prosa latina (“National competition of Latin prose”), organized by the Institute of Roman Studies ten times between 1934 and 1939 (Sacré 2019: 7-10). Many of Ficari’s poems were collected in his Carmina (Ficari 1938a).

Bibliography

Latin texts (selection)

Ficari, Quirino. 1933. Decennalia a fascibus renovatis. Pisauri: Typis G. Federici.

———. 1937. De fascibus imperioque resititutis. Pisauri: Ex Typis G. Federici.

———. 1938a. ‘De vetere Romani imperio ad iuvenes corpora ludis exercentes monita’. Il Mondo Classico 8 (1–2): 59–61.

———. 1938b. Carme augusteo: Roma Nell’epopea Di Virgilio. Roma, Bologna: Edizione del Gruppo Scrittori S.IA.

———. 1938c. Carmina. Pesaro: Ex Typis G. Federici.

———. 1938d. Orationes in certamina primum alterum tertium ab Instituto Collegioque Romanis rebus procurandis indicta missae. Pisauri: Ex Typis G. Federici.

———. 1939. De Romanae ecclesiae historia. Epistula ad filiam. Pisauri: Ex typis G. Federici.

Pascoli, Giovanni. 1928. Giovanni Pascoli: Poemetti latini. Tradotti da Quirino Ficari. Translated by Quirino Ficari. Imola: Coop. Tip. Edit. Paolo Galeati.

Scholarly works (selection)

Ficari, Quirino. 1938. La morale di Seneca. Pesaro: G. Federico.

Secondary sources

Cassa di Risparmio di Pesaro. 1986. I cento anni del Mamiani: 1884-1894. Vol. 1. 2 vols. Pesaro: Cessa di Risparmio di Pesaro. 179-181.

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.

Eberle, Josef. 1961. Viva camena: Latina huius aetatis carmina; cum commentariolo Iosephi et Linae Ijsewijn-Jacobs ‘De litteris Latinis recentioribus’. Zürich-Stuttgart: Artemis Verlag. 204.

Garavani, Giunio. 1934. ‘Quirinus Ficari. Decennalia’. Il mondo classico 4 (3): 207–8.

Paradisi, Patrizia, and Alfonso Traina. 2007. ‘Pascoli e la poesia neolatina del Novecento’. In Pascoli e la cultura del Novecento, edited by Andrea Battistini, Gianfranco Miro Gori, and Clemente Mazzotta, 125–78. Venice: Marsilio.

Sacrè, Dirk. 2019. ‘De Certamine solutae orationis Latinae italico (1934-1949) et de aliis quibusdam certaminibus.’ Melissa 209: 7–14.

Taccone, Angelo. 1938. ‘Il III concorso nazionale di prosa latina’. Il mondo classico 8 (4–6): 255–56.

Nicolò Bettegazzi