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Lamers (H.) , Reitz-Joosse (B.) (ed., trans.) The Codex Fori Mussolini. A Latin Text of Italian Fascism. Pp. x + 139, ills, maps. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. Cased, £60. ISBN: 978-1-4742-2695-0.
The prominent role which ancient Rome played in the ideology of Italian Fascism, though the focus of several recent publications (e.g. J. Arthurs, Excavating Modernity [2012]; J. Nelis, From Ancient to Modern: the Myth of Romanità during the ventennio fascista [2011]; P. Baxa, Roads and Ruins: the Symbolic Landscape of Fascist Rome [2010]), still requires a great deal of further research. L. and R.-J. have shown this to be especially true in their new book in which they provide the first detailed translation, commentary and analysis of a Latin text composed during the Fascist ventennio. L. and R.-J. have been pioneers in this field, and their publication adds new material to the growing body of scholarship on the nature of romanità in Fascist culture.
The Latin text was written in 1932 by the Italian Classicist Aurelio Giuseppe Amatucci (1867–1960) to inaugurate the regime's new sports complex in Rome, the so-called ‘Foro Mussolini’ (today's ‘Foro Italico’). It was placed along with several commemorative gold coins underneath the complex's centrepiece: a massive Carrara marble obelisk inscribed MVSSOLINI DVX, where it presumably still lies today. In his prose composition of about 1,200 words, Amatucci gives a brief account of Italian history and celebrates the various successes which Mussolini's regime achieved during his first ten years in power. This offers a glimpse into how supporters of the regime, which so fervently promoted myths and symbols of the ancient past, may have conceived of their own movement playing a similar ‘mythological’ role for future Italians.
The book is divided into eight sub-sections arranged so that each topic can be read independently or in sequence. This format makes the book accessible to students and scholars from a range of different academic backgrounds. Although some sections seem at times too short (e.g. Section 6), the authors provide excellent bibliographies, which...