Ettore Romagnoli’s Horace in Black Orbace Rereading – with Digressions - the Bimillennial Conference

Abstract

The paper investigates the Fascist exploitation of Horatian poetry by analysing the speech held by Ettore Romagnoli in 1935 on the bimillenary of the poet’s birth. Romagnoli’s oration must sacrifice to the demands of the oriented reading of Horace’s work promoted by the regime themes and attitudes characteristic of the poet (the reflections on time and the precariousness of human life, the search for self-sufficiency and aurea mediocritas, the rejection of dogmatism). Instead, the intellectual who moves from a secluded position to full adherence to the new Augustan establishment is exalted, at the cost of historical and literary distortions.