The inscription (1939) is readable on the shaft of a column of pink granite standing at the northern end of the Piazzale Konrad Adenauer. 

The inscription is carved in Roman square capitals. It quotes the motto of the 1942 World’s Fair (E42). The two words were taken from a sestertius coined during the reign of Antoninus Pius (138–161 AD), which represents the goddess Rome sitting with a shield at her feet, wearing a helmet, and holding a spear and a statuette of Victory in her left and right hand respectively. The sestertius is reproduced in high relief on the travertine pseudo-milestone standing at the entrance of the “Parco del Ninfeo”, which is close to the column with this inscription. The image of the sestertius served as the logo of the World’s Fair together with its Latin legend, as had been proposed by the General Commissariat (June 1937) and then been confirmed by royal decree (No. 1416 on 16 June 1938).

The concept of the eternity of Rome was one of the cornerstones of the ideology of the Augustan principate and has a long history of reception: the expression “eternal city” (first attested in Tib. 2.5.23) is still currently used to indicate Rome (Tosi 2017: no. 1344). Here, the idea is associated with Mussolini’s ‘refounding’ of the empire, as the three fasces carved under the inscription make clear.

The column which bears the inscription was originally intended to serve as the base of a statue of the “Genius of Fascism”, sculpted by Italo Griselli (1880–1958). However, the sculptor had to replace the base as it had to be higher and in travertine (see photo in Cristallini 1987: 315). The statue was then placed on its new, travertine column at its current location at the entrance of the Palazzo degli Uffici of the Ente autonomo EUR (Via Ciro il Grande 16). In the post-war period, its iconography was changed to symbolize the “Genius of Sport” by adding boxing gloves to the young man’s hands. The travertine base seems to have been lost subsequently, and today, the statue stands on what appears to be the uninscribed part of the original granite base. The inscribed part of the granite column still stands at the side of the building at the Piazzale.

Bibliography

Cristallini, Elisabetta. 1987. “Italo Griselli. Il genio del fascismo.” In E 42: utopia e scenario del regime. II: Urbanistica, architettura, arte e decorazione, edited by Simonetta Lux, Maurizio Calvesi, and Enrico Guidoni, 315–16. Venice: Marsilio.

———. 1992. “Le sculture.” In Il Palzzo dell’Ente Eur, edited by Simonetta Lux, Giorgio Muratore, Antonella Greco, and Elisabetta Cristallini, 171–90. Rome: Editalia.

Ferrara, Patrizia. 1987. “L’EUR: un ente per l’E 42.” In E 42: utopia e scenario del regime. I: Ideologia e programma dell’Olimpiade delle Civiltà, edited by Tullio Gregory and Achille Tartaro, 73–83. Venice: Marsilio.

Nastasi, Antonino. 2019. Le iscrizioni in latino di Roma Capitale (1870-2018). Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 632–33.

Tosi, Renzo. 2017. Dizionario delle sentenze latine e greche. Milan: Rizzoli.

Antonino Nastasi