The inscriptions (1940) can be read in Piazza Augusto Imperatore, on the wall between Via del Corea and Via Soderini. The author of both texts is unknown.

The main and most substantial inscription (1) is sculpted over the fountain in sans-serif capitals in heavy relief of monumental dimensions, showing on its sides two winged Victories bearing fasces in bas-relief. Its massive shape bears resemblance to another Latin inscription of the same year, then in the Fountains Hall of the Palazzo degli Uffici of EUR (no longer extant).

The text rhetorically celebrates the construction of the whole complex of Piazza Augusto Imperatore. First, it recalls the archaeological excavations that brought to light the Mausoleum of the Emperor Augustus standing at the centre of the open area as well as the reconstruction of the Ara Pacis Augustae (“Altar to Augustan peace”) on the side of the square facing the Tiber (which was not its original location). Secondly, it underlines the demolition of the early modern ‘squalid’ structures so as to clear the way for modern buildings by the will of Mussolini. The words resonate with the speech on the subject delivered by the Duce on 22 October 1934, the starting day of mausoleum’s rescuing works (see Muñoz 1938: 491–92).

The text is accurately written: the words volitant per auras recall two passages of Lucretius (4.32: volitant ultroque citroque per auras about atoms; 4.221: Nec variae cessant voces volitare per auras about sounds) and disiecta membra, to denote the fragments of the Ara Pacis, are reminiscent of Horace (Serm. 1.4.62), while the asyndetic tricolon viis aedificiis aedibus is also remarkable.

The name Mussolini, his epithet Dux, and the Fascist dating style were covered with plaster after World War II (Ferraironi 1953: 227–28). However, due to weathering, they became partially readable again afterwards and were fully restored in 2001 (Aicher 2000: 117, n. 1; Bartels 2012: no. 6.3, n. 4).

The other inscription (2) is located above the previous one in the lower part of the mosaic designed by Ferruccio Ferrazzi (1891–1978). The work was commissioned in December 1938 and is dated to 1940 (the Roman year MCMXL can be read at the trunk’s feet on the left), although it was finished not before April 1941 (Cambedda and Tolomeo 1991: 31). The inscription was executed in mosaic as a caption to the scene above, which was intitled The Birth of Rome (‘La nascita di Roma’). It represents the foundation myth of the city and the personification of the river Tiber as a young man carrying a boat, with Romulus and Remus and the she-wolf at his feet; each human figure is identified by his Latin name (Tiberis; Romulus; Remus).

The text directly quotes from the preface of Livy’s history Ab Urbe condita: Res est praeterea et immensi operis, ut […] quae ab exiguis profecta initiis eo creverit ut iam magnitudine laboret sua (Liv. praef. 4: “the res involves infinite labour, seeing that it must be traced back above seven hundred years, and that proceeding from slender beginnings it has so increased as now to be burdened by its own magnitude”; transl. after B.O. Foster). The untranslated word res is ambiguous, because it can denote both Livy’s work and the res publica (i.e., the Roman state), whose history and development are the subject of Livy’s book. In the inscription, the added words his (with deictic value) and Roma direct readers’ understanding towards the latter interpretation. By adding his and Roma, the line has the rhythm (not the quantities) of a dactylic hexameter, a detail suggesting that Ferrazzi did not compose the inscription himself.

Piazza Augusto Imperatore was designed by Vittorio Morpurgo (1890–1966, who added his maternal surname Ballio after the racial laws in 1938), one of the most important Italian architects of the 1930s. It was financed by the Fascist National Welfare Institute (Istituto Nazionale Fascista della Previdenza Sociale, INFPS, today’s INPS, which closed its offices in the building in 2012) and supported by the archaeologists involved in the excavations of the site. The design aimed at restoring Augustus’ tomb to its former prominence. The project’s propagandistic aim was to underline the imagined historical, political, and imperial continuity between ancient and Fascist Rome, presenting Mussolini as a “new Augustus”. This was consistent with the ideological purpose of the celebration of the bimillenary anniversary of Augustus’s birth, starting on 23 September 1937, and dominated by the large-scale exhibition ‘Mostra Augustea della Romanità’.

Bibliography

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Arthurs, Joshua. 2014. ‘«Voleva essere Cesare, Morì Vespasiano»: The Afterlives of Mussolini’s Rome’. Civiltà Romana 1: 283–302.

Bartels, Klaus. 2012. Roms sprechende Steine. Inschriften aus zwei Jahrtausenden. 4th ed. Darmstadt/Mainz: Von Zabern.

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Kostof, Spiro. 1978. ‘The Emperor and the Duce: The Planning of Piazzale Augusto Imperatore’. In Art and Architecture in the Service of Politics, edited by Linda Nochlin and Henry A. Millon. Cambridge (MA): MIT press, 270–325.

Lansford, Tyler. 2009. The Latin Inscriptions of Rome: A Walking Guide. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, no. 10.5.

Muñoz, Antonio. 1938. ‘La sistemazione del Mausoleo di Augusto’. Capitolium 13 (10): 491–508.

Nastasi, Antonino. 2019. Le iscrizioni in latino di Roma Capitale (1870-2018). Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 72–76.

Antonino Nastasi