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Rome (IT), Lungotevere Aventino [extant] - 1926

PEOPLE
[Unknown]
THEMES/GENRES
Vergil City of Rome
Ego sum pleno quem flumine cernis /
stringentem ripas et pinguia culta secantem, /
caeruleus Thybris, caelo gratissimus amnis. /
Hic mihi magna domus, celsis caput urbibus exit.
I am he whom you see grazing my banks with full flood and cleaving the rich tilth–the blue Tiber, river best beloved of Heaven. Here is my mighty home; among lofty cities flows forth my fountainhead.1
 
FLT Notes
  • 1) Translation by H. Rushton Fairclough, Virgil. Aeneid VII-XII. Appendix Vergiliana, rev. by G. P. Goold (Cambridge, MA-London: Harvard University Press, 2000).
BACKGROUND INFORMATION

The inscription (1926) still exists on the retaining wall of the Lungotevere Aventino. It is, however, in very bad shape due to graffiti as well as the general neglect of this portion of Tiber’s banks. Its author is unknown.

The inscription is carved in Roman square capitals. The text cites some lines from Vergil’s Aeneid 8.62–65, in which the god Tiber appears to Aeneas in a dream to advise him and predict the future. He ends his speech by revealing his identity with the words cited in the inscription. The quotation thus derives its sense from its position in front of the river. 

In order to avoid the seasonal overflows of the Tiber, construction works for retaining walls along the banks started in 1876 and ended in 1926 with the segment where the inscription can be found. It was designed by Vincenzo Fasolo (1886–1969), who worked for the municipality of Rome from 1912 to 1936.

The construction committee of the Ministry of Public Works originally intended to inscribe into the wall a commemorative text celebrating the completion of the construction process (Corsetti 1926: 141), but it eventually decided to use this quotation from Vergil. The inscription had to be read as an expression of continuity between Roman past and Fascist present. This ideological appropriation of Vergil’s words was reinforced by the sculpted decoration surrounding the text: the fasces on both sides of the inscription, the imperial eagle on the left, the she-wolf with Romulus and Remus on the right, and four naval rams (rostra) under the text (Nastasi 2014: 368–70). The sculptural work was executed by Cristo Giordano Nicoletti (1890–1930).

 

Bibliography

Corsetti, Giampelino. 1926. ‘La sistemazione del lungotevere Aventino’. Capitolium 2 (3): 137–41.

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

Loperfido, Gianni, Nicolò Giuseppe Brancato, and Eugenia Serafini. 1999. Roma: iscrizioni dal Medioevo al Duemila: la storia della città raccontata sui muri. Latina: Il Gabbiano, 259 (nr. 47).

Nastasi, Antonino. 2014. ‘Forme e formule dell’epigrafia classica nelle iscrizioni postunitarie di Roma: il caso di Ponte Sublicio’. In Scrivere, leggere, conservare. A colloquio con Armando Petrucci, edited by Nadia Cannata and Maddalena Signorini, 353–70. Studj Romanzi, n.s. 10. Rome: Società Filologica Romana.

———. 2019. Le iscrizioni in latino di Roma Capitale (1870-2018). Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 201–02.

 

                                                                                                                Antonino Nastasi

 

Inscription at the wall of the Lungotevere Aventino (situation in 2011). © A. Nastasi (Rome).