These inscriptions (1930) can be read inside the council chamber of Palazzo Senatorio, the seat of Rome’s municipality. The hall is called “Giulio Cesare” after the statue of the ancient dictator which was placed there in 1929.

The inscriptions are painted in Roman square capitals along the upper part of the walls’ decoration. They present a selection of Latin poetry from antiquity to the medieval era. Each of them is about the power, greatness, and providential role of Rome and its empire. The theme of romanità is suggested also by the place itself, the Capitoline Hill, the core of religious cult in ancient times and of the municipality’s political life from the Middle Ages onwards.

The first inscription (1) quotes a famous line from Vergil’s Aeneid (Verg. Aen. 6.851), which was a tagline of Rome’s imperialist ideology during the Augustan era. This and the following two lines (852–53: Hae tibi erunt artes, pacique imponere morem / parcere subiectis et debellare superbos) were widely used during the ventennio to justify Fascist foreign policy (Strobl 2013: 101–14; see the inscription once adorning the Vittoriano in Piazza Venezia). Here, the quotation is located over a statue representing Julius Caesar, and this position gives the inscription a prominent role within the epigraphic programme.

The second inscription (2) quotes the incipit of an epigram by Martial (12.8.1–2), in which the poet celebrates Emperor Trajan.

The third inscription (3), divided into two parts, quotes two lines from the first of Vergil’s Eclogues (Verg. Ecl. 1.24–25), in which Tityrus (traditionally identified with the poet himself) points out to Meliboeus the astonishing impression the sight of Rome made on him, due to its unsurpassed greatness.

The following inscription (4), located facing the first one, quotes a line of the “Hymn to Rome”, which is the most renowned section of De reditu suo (1.47–164) by the 5^th-century poet Rutilius Namatianus. These words exalt the civilizing role of the Roman empire, which gave common laws and citizenship to peoples it subjected (Rutil. Nam. 1.63).

The next inscription (5) quotes the Leonine verse first attested in the Graphia aureae urbis Romae (chapters 43 and 44), dating to around 1030, that was carved in seals and coins of the Holy Roman Empire from the 11^th century until the end of the Middle Ages as well as in signets of the Rome’s municipality during the 12^th and 13^th centuries. The verse, also known with tenet instead of regit, amplifies the proverbial expression Roma caput mundi, first attested in Lucan (2.655–56, but the words Roma caput orbis can also be found in Livy 1.16.7 and Ovid, Am. 1.15.26), aimed at stressing the power of Rome all over the world.

The last Latin inscription (6) quotes the first line of a poem by the Carolingian poet Alcuin of York (d. 804) dedicated to pope Leo III and Emperor Charles the Great (Alcuin, Carm. 25.1). In Alcuin’s verse, Rome’s primacy is not only political but also (and above all) spiritual, as the city is imagined as the seat of the papacy and the centre of Christianity.  

The series of inscriptions is rounded off by a quotation in Italian from Mussolini himself. It is painted over door that opens to the square and says: “Il Campidoglio dopo il / Golgota è il colle più sacro / alle genti civili” (“The Capitolium is the hill most sacred to civilized peoples after Golgotha”). These words are adapted from the speech Mussolini gave when he received Roman citizenship on 21 April 1924 (Mussolini 1956: 234). The combination of inscriptions thus exemplifies the juxtaposition of ancient and modern quotations in both Latin and Italian to communicate the idea of continuity between the glorious imperial past and the Fascist present.

The inscriptions were painted in 1930, when the hall lost its function as council chamber due to the installation of the Governorate and became a hall of representation. The painter Eugenio Cisterna (1862–1933) initially thought to fill the panels with views of famous Roman monuments such as the Colosseum, the Forum, and the Pantheon as well as mythological scenes; the idea of the inscriptions was conceived later. The identity of the person who selected the texts is unknown (Tittoni Monti 1988: 96-98).

Bibliography

Mussolini, Benito. 1956. Opera omnia di Benito Mussolini. Dal viaggio negli Abruzzi al delitto Matteotti (23 agosto 1923 - 13 giugno 1924). Edited by Eduardo Susmel and Duilio Susmel. Vol. 20. 35 vols. Florence: La Fenice.

Nastasi, Antonino. 2019. Le iscrizioni in latino di Roma Capitale (1870-2018). Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 171–73.

Strobl, Wolfgang. 2013. ‘“Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento…”. La ricezione di Virgilio e Orazio nell’ Italia fascista: il caso di Piazza della Vittoria a Bolzano’. Quaderni di storia 78: 87–135.

Tittoni Monti, Maria Elisa. 1988. ‘Decorazioni anni Trenta nel Palazzo Senatorio: Eugenio Cisterna e i fregi dell’Aula Consiliare e della Sala della Cleopatra’. Bollettino dei Musei Comunali di Roma 2: 95–104.

Antonino Nastasi