The inscription (1938) is still visible on the external right wall of the main entrance to the Liceo classico statale “Virgilio” (Lungotevere dei Tebaldi 17). Its author is unknown.

The inscription is carved in Roman square capitals. It quotes Vergil’s Aeneid 7.257–58, which is Faunus’s oracle to King Latinus, anticipating Aeneas’s arrival and the glorious future of his progeny. The poet’s name is indicated in Italian (Virgilio). The reading hinc is attested only by the codices Oblongus (Vat. Lat. 1574) and Mediceus Pierius (Laur. 39, 23), and modern editors of the text unanimously prefer huic (but cf. Conington and Nettleship 1883: 29, who claim that the reading hinc is “very plausible”). In either reading, the reference is to Aeneas.

In the context of the inscription, hinc refers to the school from where a new generation of young Italians would emerge. Learned readers familiar with Vergil’s original text would be able to complete the verse: et totum quae viribus occupet orbem (“to occupy by its power all the world”). The (hidden) message of the inscription is entirely in line with Fascist educational policies, aimed at producing a new generation fit to conquer and rule the world. Three fasces were sculpted on the same wall; unlike the inscription, they were erased after Fascism’s fall, but their traces are still clearly visible today. A bronze statue of Vergil is in front of the inscription.

The building was probably designed by Vincenzo Fasolo (1886–1969), a very active architect who worked for the municipality of Rome from 1912 to 1936 (Terranova 1995: 273). 

Bibliography

Conington, John, and Henry Nettleship. 1883. The Works of Virgil. Vol. 3. London: Whittaker & Co.

Ferraironi, Francesco. 1953. ‘Iscrizioni ornamentali di Roma scomparse’. Strenna dei Romanisti 14: 226–30.

Terranova, Antonino. 1955. ‘Fasolo, Vincenzo’. In Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 45: 272–75. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana fondata da Giovanni Treccani.

Nastasi, Antonino. 2019. Le iscrizioni in latino di Roma Capitale (1870-2018). Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 127–28.

Antonino Nastasi