The inscription (1930) can be read inside the Mausoleum of Augustus (Piazza Augusto Imperatore), originally built by the emperor starting from 28 BCE as dynastical tomb for the Julio-Claudian family. Although there is no bibliography on the inscription, the author of the text can be identified with Raffaello Santarelli thanks to stylistic reasons; moreover, he wrote all the texts dealing with the archaeological excavation works by the Governorate.

The inscription is carved in Roman square capitals, retraced with red colouring (‘rubricated’) on a plaque fixed on a wall of the tomb’s inner room.

The text celebrates the restoration of the burial chamber in the mausoleum, where the cinerary urn of Augustus was hosted, between 1926 and 1930. Excavations were conducted over four years (quadriennio) during the summers to avoid interference with the concert seasons held inside the mausoleum. In 1907, an auditorium was installed within the mausoleum, and the burial chamber was located directly beneath the concert-hall. Before that, the mausoleum served as a fortress for the Colonna family during medieval times, then as a rooftop garden for the Soderini family in the 16^th century, and later became an amphitheatre for public spectacles in the mid-18^th century under the marquis Correa. This explains why the text notes that, due to the passage of centuries and human indifference (temporum vitio atque hominum incuria), the chamber had become completely obliterated (collapsam obrutamque). However, the inscription adds that, thanks to Rome’s Fascist municipal government, this significant monument of the Roman Empire (prisci imperii sanctissimum monumentum) has now been restored to new visibility (ut … honori et celebritati redderetur).

The inscription features phrasings and stylistic elements typical of Santarelli’s inscriptions (see in particular the inscription at Trajan’s market). These features include the title vir clarissimus (literally ‘very famous man’) to indicate senators (this title was reserved for members of the Roman Senate during the imperial period) and the title praefectus Urbi to indicate Rome’s governors: Francesco Boncompagni Ludovisi (1886–1955), who oversaw the completion of the restoration, along with Filippo Cremonesi (1922–1926) and Ludovico Spada Potenziani Veralli (1926–1928), under whom the work was initiated and executed.

The inscription additionally acknowledges the Governorate’s archaeologists who directed the restoration works, including Giulio Quirino Giglioli (1886–1956), who served as the general director of the Mostra Augustea della Romanità (Augustan Show of Romanness) in 1937–1938, Antonio Muñoz, and Antonio Maria Colini (1900–1989), one of Giglioli’s students. Notably, Augustus is commemorated with the honorific title pater patriae, i.e. ‘father of the fatherland’, which he received in 2 BCE (cf. Aug. R.G. 35.1 and Suet. Aug. 58.1), as seen in the inscription on the basement of his statue along Via dei Fori Imperiali. In the context of Fascist propaganda, the title pater patriae seems to suggest that Augustus is the ‘father’ of modern Italy as well.

In the Fascist dating, Santarelli did not use the phrase lictorii nominis, which he used in the inscriptions of the year before (at Trajan’s market and the Tomb of the Scipiones) and employed the more elegant formula a fascibus renovatis instead (literally ‘from the renewal of the fasces’). He used the same formulation also in the inscription of the Academy of Saint Luke  (because the Fascist era started on 28 October 1922, the 9^th year indicates that the inscription dates back in a period between 28 October and 31 December 1930). Moreover, Santarelli included a reference to the celebration of the bimillenary anniversary of Vergil’s birth, which began on 15 October 1930. This occasion provided the regime with the opportunity to present a Fascist ideological interpretation of Vergil’s poetry and, more broadly, of the Augustan Empire.

The restoration of Augustus’ burial chamber marked the first step in subsequent operations to create a brand-new square beginning in 1934, as well as to remove all post-antiquity additions to the mausoleum starting in 1936, when the auditorium stopped its activities to undergo demolition (for mor information about this phase of restructuring Augustus’ mausoleum, see the introduction to the inscription at Piazza Augusto Imperatore).

Bibliography

Giglioli, Giulio Quirino. 1930. ‘Il sepolcreto imperiale’. Capitolium 6 (11): 532-567.