Capitolium novum is a poem of 332 Latin hexameters. The poem offers a literary tour through the historical center of Rome in its historical and architectural contexts. It responds in particular to the recent urbanistic interventions of the Fascist regime around the area of the Roman fora. The poem opens at the Capitoline Hill with a statement of the reinvigoration of the ancient city of Rome (1-10). Then the narrator leads the reader on a tour of its main sights beginning on Piazza Venezia (11-29), continuing along the Via dell’Impero (now the Via dei Fori Imperiali) with a short detour up the back of the Capitoline Hill (30-113) to the Colosseum (114-132) and turning right to the Arch of Constantine (144-149). Next, the narrator returns and walks up the Via del Mare (196-255) all the while pointing out and interpreting numerous ancient and later monuments (for a map of Giammaria’s literary tour of Rome, see Bettegazzi, Lamers and Reitz-Joosse 2019: 157). After an imaginative flight to the seacoast and a reflection on Rome’s and Italy’s newly restored naval power (256-286), the poem concludes with an extended affirmation of the eternity of Rome and of the ancient Latin authors who have immortalized her (287-332). The narrator interrupts the walking tour several times with more reflective passages about pagan, Christian and contemporary Rome. Capitolium novum was first published as Giammaria (1933 = A) in 100 copies, with the subtitle Carmen decennale, referring to the ten-year anniversary of the Fascist March on Rome. It was then republished in Giammaria (1934 = B), pp. 17-32. The text below is taken from the 1934 version. Typographical differences between the 1933 and 1934 versions are mentioned in the footnotes. On Giammaria’s Capitolium novum, see Bettegazzi, Lamers and Reitz-Joosse (2019).

Bibliography

Latin texts

Giammaria, Francesco. 1933. Capitolium novum: carmen decennale. Rome: typ. Novissima.

———. 1934. Tria Carmina. Rome: Ex tipis novissima.

Secondary sources

Bettegazzi, Nicolò, Han Lamers, and Bettina Reitz-Joosse. 2019. “Viewing Rome in the Latin Literature of the Ventennio Fascista: Francesco Giammaria’s Capitolium Novum.” Fascism 8 (2): 153–78.

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

Hylke de Boer