The inscription (ca. 1931) is still visible, divided into four parts, on the colonnettes in front of the Palazzo del Viminale in Rome. Its author is unknown.

The inscription is carved in Roman square capitals on the four low colonettes at the beginning of the ramps that lead to the ministry’s building. The colonettes are topped by sculptures of eagles, symbol of the Roman legions. The text directly addresses the eagle as a victorious symbol of Italian Fascism and its renewed imperial ambitions. The text presents some rhythmical and syntactic correspondences (per fines perge ~ per orbem clamitans; victrix … evola ~ audax … clamitans); the anastrophe nostros per fines is remarkable. The word Ducis was imperfectly erased at the end of the Second World War, and is still readable today.

Piazza del Viminale was designed by Manfredo Manfredi (1859–1927), architect of the facing Palazzo del Viminale, which serves as the seat of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It was inaugurated by Mussolini on 5 May 1931. The fountain at the square’s centre and its sculpted decorations were executed by Publio Morbiducci (1889–1963), an important and appreciated artist deeply involved in public Fascist commissions. The Piazza’s iconographic programme airs the myth of romanità: the fountain shows, on the front, the she-wolf feeding Romulus and Remus, and the pillars have paired imperial eagles on the top. On the lower part of the pillars were sculpted fasces, probably removed around the same time as the word Ducis (see Archivio Storico Istituto Luce, A Roma la sistemazione di piazza del Viminale, Giornale Luce A0773, 05/1931).

Bibliography

Bartels, Klaus. 2012. Roms sprechende Steine. Inschriften aus zwei Jahrtausenden. 4th ed. Darmstadt/Mainz: Von Zabern, no. 10.14.

Ferraironi, Francesco. 1937. Iscrizioni ornamentali su edifici e monumenti di Roma con appendice sulle iscrizioni scomparse. Rome: Industria Tipografia Romana, no. 827.

Nastasi, Antonino. 2019. Le iscrizioni in latino di Roma Capitale (1870-2018). Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 46–47. 

Antonino Nastasi