In laudem Beniti Mussolini consists of 36 lines and is composed in elegiac couplets. The poem is one of the many poems written during the 1930s in praise of Mussolini. It extols the leader of Fascism as the restorer of Rome’s and Italy’s former glory (1-6). Pairs of elegiac couplets are used to express the positive changes Mussolini is said to have brought about, each first one starting with si prius (‘if before’) and containing a negative aspect of Italy before Mussolini, and the second starting with te duce (‘under your leadership’), indicating a positive change effected by Mussolini (7-30). Examples of Mussolini’s achievements according to the author are the restoration of Christian values (7-10), the populace’s work ethics (15-18) and the draining of the Pontine marshes (27-30). The poem ends with a statement of the magnificence of Rome (31-36). The poem was published in Giammaria (1934: 11-14).

Bibliography

Latin texts

Giammaria, Francesco. 1934. Tria carmina. Rome: Ex tipis novissima.

Secondary sources

Bettegazzi, Nicolò, Han Lamers, and Bettina Reitz-Joosse. 2019. “Viewing Rome in the Latin Literature of the Ventennio Fascista: Francesco Giammaria’s Capitolium Novum.” Fascism 8 (2): 153–78.

Binnebeke, Xavier van. 2020. “Hoeufft’s Legacy: Neo-Latin Poetry in the Archive of the Certamen Poeticum Hoeufftianum (1923–1943).” In Studies in the Latin Literature and Epigraphy of Italian Fascism, edited by Han Lamers, Bettina Reitz-Joosse, and Valerio Sanzotta, 245–325. Supplementa Humanistica Lovaniensia 46. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Hylke de Boer