These inscriptions can be seen in the Liceo Classico “Giulio Cesare” (Corso Trieste 48), built by the Governorate and inaugurated on 28 October 1936.

The external inscription (1) is carved in square Roman capitals and retraced with red colouring (‘rubricated’) on the base of a bronze replica of the statue of Julius Caesar placed at the entrance of the school’s courtyard. The statue is identical to the one that was placed along the Via dei Fori Imperiali. The two inscriptions are similar, but there are also some differences: in the inscription at the school, the title of dictator perpetuus remains unmentioned, the Fascist dating is expressed in words rather than numbers (decimo quarto), and another date, counted from the refoundation of the Empire (proclaimed on 9 May 1936), is added. The inscription thus implicitly conveys the ideological link between Caesar’s Rome and the Fascist empire.

The inner inscription (2) is carved in relief on the longest wall of the aula magna of the school; the use of punctuation (commas and exclamation mark) as well as the metrical layout are remarkable. It quotes the entire third strophe of the Carmen Saeculare (lines 9–12), written by Horace and commissioned by emperor Augustus in 17 BC in occasion of the Ludi Saeculares celebrating the Roman empire. These verses achieved some notoriety in 1919 as they were used in Italian translation as refrain of the Inno a Roma (“Hymn to Rome”) written by the poet Fausto Salvatori (1870–1929) and set to music by Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) (Strobl 2015). Their popularity rose during the ventennio since the exaltation of Rome’s greatness they contain resonated well with Fascist propaganda. The quotation was also used as an inscription at Piazza della Vittoria in Bozen (Strobl 2013: 94–101), inside the Mostra Augustea della Romanità (Giglioli 1938: 642), and over the Arch of the Philaeni in Libya, adapted in a shorter form (Agbamu 2019), all dating to 1937 (Nastasi 2020: 180–87).

The building was designed by the architect Cesare Valle (1902–2000). The entrance was flanked by fasces and an Italian inscription (in relief) which run as follows: Il popolo italiano ha creato / col suo sangue l’impero, lo / feconderà col suo lavoro, / e lo difenderà contro / chiunque con le sue / armi. IX maggio XIV e(ra) f(ascista), // M(ussolini)” (“The Italian people has created the empire with their blood; they will make it fruitful with their work, and they will defend it against anyone with their weapons”) (Mussolini 1959: 269) (see also Archivo Storico Istituto Luce, Balilla moschettieri con il mantello schierati sulla scalinata all'ingresso del Liceo Giulio Cesare, A00067458, 28/10/1936). This was a quotation from the speech through which Mussolini proclaimed the Italian empire in May 1936. After the Second World War, both the fasces and the inscription were removed (Ferraironi 1953: 228).

Bibliography

Agbamu, Samuel. 2019. ‘The Arco dei Fileni: A Fascist Reading of Sallust’s Bellum Iugurthinum’, Classical Receptions Journal 11 (2): 157–77.

Anonymous. 1937. ‘Regio Liceo Ginnasio Giulio Cesare a Roma. Arch. Cesare Valle’, Architettura 16 (8), 455–64.

Ferraironi, Francesco 1953. ‘Iscrizioni ornamentali di Roma scomparse’, Strenna dei Romanisti 14: 226–30.

[Giglioli, Giulio Quirino]. 1938. Mostra Augustea della Romanità. Catalogo, 4^th ed. Rome: C. Colombo.

Mussolini, Benito. 1959. Opera omnia. Dall’inaugurazione della Provincia di Littoria alla Proclamazione dell’Impero: 19 dicembre 1934 – 9 maggio 1936, Edoardo Susmel and Duilio Susmel. Vol 27. 35 vols. Florence: La Fenice.

Nastasi, Antonino. 2019. Le iscrizioni in latino di Roma capitale (1870-2018). Rome: Quasar, 612–13.

———. 2020. ‘L’epigrafia in latino negli anni del fascismo. L’uso dei classici tra continuità e fratture’. In Studies in the Latin Literature and Epigraphy of Italian Fascism, edited by Han Lamers, Bettina Reitz-Joosse, and Valerio Sanzotta, 175–97. Supplementa Humanistica Lovaniensia 46. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

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.

———. 2015. ‘“Possis nihil urbe Roma visere maius”: Zur politischen und musikalischen Rezeption des Carmen saeculare im italienischen Faschismus und zu einer Vertonung Aldo Aytanos (1926/27)’, Latomus 74: 735–78.

Antonino Nastasi