Beniti Mussolini de instaurando Italorum imperio oratio is Pighi’s Latin translation of the speech held by Mussolini on 9 May 1936 to announce the conquest of Ethiopia and the establishment of the Italian empire in Oriental Africa. In the Latin foreword, Pighi explains his stylistic guidelines (drawing from Cicero and the language of laws and inscriptions). He also reveals one of the aims of his translation, i.e. to read it with his students (ut cum discipulis legerem). Luggin (2020) analyses Pighi’s translation and compares it to other Latin translations of the same speech, namely those of Nicola Festa and Luciano Miori.

Beniti Mussolini de instaurando Italorum imperio oratio was first published in the journal Aevum (Pighi 1936a) and then as a separate booklet (Pighi 1936b).

Bibliography

Latin texts

Mussolini, Benito. 1936a. Beniti Mussolini de instaurando Italorum imperio oratio. Translated by Giovanni Battista Pighi. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

———. 1936b. ‘Beniti Mussolini de instaurando Italorum imperio oratio’. Translated by Giovanni Battista Pighi. Aevum: Rassegna di scienze storiche linguistiche e filologiche 10 (4): 449–52.

Secondary sources

Luggin, Johanna. 2020. ‘Imperium iam tandem Italiae restitutum est. Lateinische Übersetzungen der Reden Mussolinis’. In Studies in the Latin Literature and Epigraphy of Italian Fascism, edited by Han Lamers, Bettina Reitz-Joosse, and Valerio Sanzotta, 105–42. Supplementa Humanistica Lovaniensia 46. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Nicolò Bettegazzi