Rome (IT), Piazza Augusto Imperatore [extant] - 1940
The inscriptions (1940) can be
read in Piazza Augusto Imperatore, on the wall between
Via del Corea and Via Soderini. The author of both texts is unknown.
The main and most substantial inscription (1) is
sculpted over the fountain in sans-serif capitals in heavy relief of monumental
dimensions, showing on its sides two winged Victories bearing fasces in
bas-relief. Its massive shape bears resemblance to another Latin inscription of the same year, then
in the Fountains Hall of the Palazzo degli Uffici of EUR (no longer
extant).
The text rhetorically
celebrates the construction of the whole complex of Piazza Augusto Imperatore.
First, it recalls the archaeological excavations that brought to light the
Mausoleum of the Emperor Augustus standing at the centre of the open area as
well as the reconstruction of the Ara Pacis Augustae (“Altar
to Augustan peace”) on the side of the square facing the Tiber (which was not
its original location). Secondly, it underlines the demolition of the early
modern ‘squalid’ structures so as to clear the way for modern buildings by the will
of Mussolini. The words resonate with the speech on the subject delivered by
the Duce on 22 October 1934, the starting day of mausoleum’s rescuing works
(see Muñoz 1938: 491–92).
The text is accurately written:
the words disiecta membra to denote the fragments of the Ara
Pacis are reminiscent of Horace (Serm. 1.4.62), while
the asyndetic tricolon viis aedificiis
aedibus is also remarkable.
The name Mussolini,
his epithet Dux, and the Fascist dating style were covered with plaster
after World War II (Ferraironi 1953: 227–28). However, due to weathering, they became partially readable
again afterwards and were fully restored in 2001 (Aicher 2000: 117, n. 1;
Bartels 2012: no. 6.3, n. 4).
The other inscription (2) is
located above the previous one in the lower part of the
mosaic designed by Ferruccio Ferrazzi (1891–1978). The work was commissioned in
December 1938 and is dated to 1940 (the Roman year MCMXL can be read at the trunk’s
feet on the left), although it was finished not before April 1941 (Cambedda and
Tolomeo 1991: 31). The inscription was executed
in mosaic as a caption to the scene above, which was intitled The Birth of
Rome (‘La nascita di Roma’). It represents the foundation myth of the city
and the personification of the river Tiber as a young man carrying a boat, with
Romulus and Remus and the she-wolf at his feet; each human figure is identified
by his Latin name (Tiberis; Romulus; Remus).
The text directly quotes from
the preface of Livy’s history Ab Urbe condita: Res est
praeterea et immensi operis, ut […] quae ab exiguis
profecta initiis eo creverit ut iam magnitudine laboret sua (Liv. praef.
4: “the res involves infinite labour, seeing that it must be
traced back above seven hundred years, and that proceeding from slender
beginnings it has so increased as now to be burdened by its own
magnitude”; transl. after B.O. Foster). The untranslated word res is
ambiguous, because it can denote both Livy’s work and the res publica (i.e.,
the Roman state), whose history and development are the subject of Livy’s book.
In the inscription, the added words his (with deictic value)
and Roma direct readers’ understanding towards the latter
interpretation. By adding his and Roma, the line
has the rhythm (not the quantities) of a dactylic hexameter, a detail
suggesting that Ferrazzi did not compose the inscription himself.
Piazza Augusto Imperatore was
designed by Vittorio Morpurgo (1890–1966, who added
his maternal surname Ballio after the racial laws in 1938), one of the most
important Italian architects of the 1930s. It was financed by the Fascist
National Welfare Institute (Istituto Nazionale Fascista della Previdenza
Sociale, INFPS, today’s INPS, which closed its offices in the building in 2012)
and supported by the archaeologists involved in the excavations of the site.
The design aimed at restoring Augustus’ tomb to its former prominence. The project’s propagandistic aim was to underline the imagined
historical, political, and imperial continuity between ancient and Fascist
Rome, presenting Mussolini as a “new Augustus”. This was consistent with the
ideological purpose of the celebration of the bimillenary anniversary of
Augustus’s birth, starting on 23 September 1937, and dominated by the
large-scale exhibition ‘Mostra Augustea della Romanità’.
Bibliography
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Antonino Nastasi