The inscription (1937) is still visible over the entrance of the former offices of the National Institute of Insurances (Istituto Nazionale delle Assicurazioni, INA) at Piazza di Sant’Andrea della Valle 6. Raffaello Santarelli authored the text.

The inscription is carved in sans-serif capitals. It consists of an elegiac couplet in the form of a versus aureus; its two lines are perfectly justified, while the date is centralised below in characters of smaller dimensions. The text concisely connects the foreign and the urbanistic policy of the regime as two aspects of the same ideal of greatness: the first verse refers to the conquest of Ethiopia and the second to the construction of Corso Rinascimento.

The couplet’s language echoes the elegiac poets: for example, bellica is in the same metrical position as in, e.g., Prop. 2.15.43; 3.14.15 and Ov. Met. 4.754 (the words bellica virtus as closing feet are only found in Prud. Psych. 208); for nostra … urbe in the same metrical position see Prop. 2.32.48 and Ov. Fast. 2.616; 4.248; 6.624; for decor at the end of the pentameter see Tib. 3.8.8; Ov. Ars 3.282; Fast. 2.764.

The dating formula is remarkable: the Fascist dating starts from the proclamation of Empire on 9 May 1936 rather than the start of the ‘Fascist Era’ on 28 October 1922, which is much more common.

Piazza Sant’Andrea della Valle is the result of the deep urbanistic transformation that changed this area of the historical centre of Rome with the opening of Corso Rinascimento between 1936 and 1938. This alteration responded to Mussolini’s ambition to create space around the most relevant historical buildings and archaeological ruins of the city and, at the same time, to modernise Rome as the capital of the Fascist State. The new avenue and the INA’s building in Piazza di Sant’Andrea della Valle were planned by Arnaldo Foschini (1884–1968), one of the most important Roman architects during the ventennio, who was very close to Marcello Piacentini (Foschini 1937). The over-all design of the inscription’s architectural context complies with Fascist propaganda. The backwall of the loggia, for example, shows the she-wolf feeding Romulus and Remus, together with the ubiquitous fasces (Arthurs 2014: 293–95).

Bibliography

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, no.3.5.

Ferraironi, Francesco. 1937. Iscrizioni ornamentali su edifici e monumenti di Roma con appendice sulle iscrizioni scomparse. Rome: Industria Tipografica Romana, 523-4, no. 24. 

Foschini, Arnaldo. 1937. ‘Il corso del rinascimento’. Capitolium 12 (2): 73–89.  

Lansford, Tyler. 2009. The Latin Inscriptions of Rome: A Walking Guide. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, no. 12.1.

Nastasi, Antonino. 2016. ‘Urbis ad ornatum est‘ versificata’ domus. Le iscrizioni metriche in latino di Roma Capitale’. Semicherchio 54 (1): 31–50.

———. 2019. Le iscrizioni in latino di Roma Capitale (1870-2018). Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 140-1.

Antonino Nastasi