Ara Pacis Augustae in Urbe restituta is a poem of 70 hexameter lines that Genovesi wrote in 1938 to celebrate the restoration of the Ara Pacis Augustae (“Altar of Augustan Peace”): this project was part of the programme designed by the Fascist regime in the context of the Bimillenario Augusteo, the two-thousandth year anniversary of Augustus’ birth. The central themes of this poem are the relationship between Augustus’ empire and the advent of Christianity (vv. 6-36), and the significance of the restored Altar for a new era of peace for Europe and the world (vv. 45-70). Genovesi praises the restoration of the Altar (vv. 41-47) and expresses hope that the newly-established Fascist empire become a beacon of Christian ideals of peace and fraternity for other nations (vv. 51-55). Ara Pacis Augustae in Urbe restituta was first published in Genovesi (1938) and then in Genovesi (1942a: 38-39). In the later edition of his poems (Genovesi 1959: 246-248), this poem was reprinted without the few verses alluding to the foundation of the Fascist empire (vv. 48-55 in the 1938- and 1942a-edition).

Bibliography

Latin texts

Genovesi, Vittorio. 1938. ‘Ara Pacis Augustae in Urbe restituta’, Alma Roma 25 (11): 170.

———. 1942a. Carmina patriae. Rome: Messaggero del Sacro Cuore. 

Other works of the author

———. 1959. Victorii Genovesi Carmina. Curante Instituto Romanis studiis provehendis. Rome: Desclée et socii.

Secondary sources

Abrate, Giuseppe. 1940. ‘Poeti latini dell’era fascista’, Roma. Rivista di studi e di vita romana 18 (9): 304-309.

Binnebeke, Xavier van. 2020. ‘Hoeufft’s Legacy: Neo-Latin Poetry in the Archives 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

Corallo, Maria. 1945. La poesia latina di Vittorio Genovesi. Milan: Vita e Pensiero. 

Lamers, Han and Reitz-Joosse, Bettina. 2016. ‘Lingua Lictoria: the Latin Literature of Italian Fascism’, Classical Receptions Journal 8 (2): 216-252.

Mondrone, Domenico. (1941) ‘La poesia latina di Vittorio Genovesi’, La Civilità Cattolica 92 (1): 355-368.

Sacré, Dirk. 2020. ‘The Certamen Hoeufftianum during the ventennio fascista: An Exploration (With Unpublished Poems by Vittorio Genovesi and Giuseppe Favaro)’. In Studies in the Latin Literature and Epigraphy of Italian Fascism, edited by Han Lamers, Bettina Reitz-Joosse, and Valerio Sanzotta, 199–241. Supplementa Humanistica Lovaniensia 46. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Nicolò Bettegazzi