Prof Han Lamers – Prof Dr Bettina Reitz-Joosse | The Politics of Language: How Latin Helped Shape Mussolini’s Italy

When wandering through Italian cities today, visitors will encounter Latin inscriptions on all manner of buildings and monuments. While many date back to ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, or the Renaissance, others were created during Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime (1922–1943). These Latin texts weren’t merely decorative — they were deliberately crafted political tools that helped forge connections between Fascist Italy and ancient Rome, embedding the regime’s ideology into the very fabric of Italian society.

Ongoing research by Professor Han Lamers (University of Oslo) and Professor Bettina Reitz-Joosse (University of Groningen) reveals how Fascist Italy weaponized ancient Rome’s language to legitimise its power and connect Mussolini’s regime to Italy’s imperial past. Their projects involve collaboration with an international team of mostly junior researchers based in Norway, the Netherlands, Austria, and Italy.

The Hidden Power of an Ancient Language

Under the leadership of Benito Mussolini, Latin acquired distinct ideological significance. It became a potent visual and symbolic element in Fascist propaganda across diverse media — from postcards and medals to monumental architecture and even the Italian landscape itself.

Lamers and Reitz-Joosse’s research reveals how Latin served as more than just a written language, it became a visual sign of recognition that signified the vigilant presence of Mussolini’s regime. Even for Italians who couldn’t understand Latin, these inscriptions conveyed symbolic meaning through their physical presentation, location, and association with Fascist ideology.

Inscription at Piazza Adriana, Rome © A. Nastasi

Their work thus challenges the idea that Latin was confined to elite cultural circles. Even if most Italians couldn’t read Latin, the language continued to be part of their daily experience under Mussolini. From medals awarded to Fascist youth organizations to tapestries displayed during mass spectacles, Latin appeared in various contexts throughout Italian society. In 1923, Mussolini himself received a gold medal adorned with the fasces symbol and the Latin inscription ‘In hoc signo vinces’ (‘In this sign, you shall conquer’), echoing the Roman Emperor Constantine, who, before an important battle, reportedly saw similar words in a vision, accompanied by a cross. This was another effort to legitimize Mussolini’s personal power.

A Language of Legitimisation

Latin’s presence extended far beyond academic circles. Prof Lamers highlights how Latin inscriptions appeared across Italy, from major cities to small towns, and in various contexts, ranging from official state buildings to everyday objects, such as postcards and stamps.

One striking example is a postcard dated just two days after Mussolini’s March on Rome that brought him to power in 1922. The postcard features a portrait of Mussolini, images of Fascist symbols, and a Latin caption arranged to resemble an elegiac couplet — a classical poetic form. Though the Latin text contains linguistic peculiarities, its presence serves to elevate the political imagery with a sense of Roman gravitas, a strategy also used by extremist movements today, who often seek to associate themselves with the supposed ‘glory’ of societies from antiquity. The postcard example illustrates how Latin was used not just by the Fascist regime but also by private individuals to express political allegiance, showing how the language permeated multiple levels of society.

Inscription of Piazza di Sant’Andrea della Valle, Rome © A. Nastas

The ‘Speaking Stones’ of Fascism

Architectural inscriptions played a particularly important role in Fascist propaganda. Lamers and Reitz-Joosse have been working together with Dr Antonino Nastasi, an expert in modern Latin epigraphy, to study the Latin epigraphy of Fascist Rome and make it accessible.

Within the ongoing project in Oslo, Prof Lamers examined how Latin texts were incorporated into building façades to convey specific political messages, focusing on two ‘Case del Mutilato’ (‘Houses of the Wounded’) — buildings dedicated to wounded war veterans, which embodied the Fascist cult of patriotic sacrifice. Despite their different architectural styles (modernist in Pordenone and more traditionally Roman in Catania), both buildings feature prominent Latin inscriptions on their façades. In Pordenone, the inscription quotes Virgil’s Aeneid, while the Catanian building displays an original Latin composition praising the unwavering spirit of wounded veterans.

While the practice of inscribing buildings was not new, Fascism appropriated it as a tool of promoting Fascism and its leader. Inscriptions transformed buildings into ‘speaking stones’ that connected the modern Fascist state to ancient Rome. The physical features of the inscriptions, including lettering style, size, and placement, reinforced their political significance. In Pordenone, the modernist lettering with interpuncts (dots between words) recalled ancient Roman inscriptions while incorporating modernist shapes, visually linking ancient and Fascist Rome.

Casa del Mutilato in Pordenone. Photograph by L. Laureati. License CC-BY.

Latin Propaganda Built into the Landscape

Perhaps the most extraordinary example of Latin’s material presence in Fascist Italy was the ‘pineta Dux’ — a formation of approximately 20,000 pine trees planted on the western slope of Monte Giano (about 80 kilometres northeast of Rome) to spell out the Latin word ‘DVX’ (leader).

Created in the late 1930s by forestry students with assistance from the local population, this massive landscape inscription inscribed Mussolini’s authority onto the Italian countryside. The choice of pine trees wasn’t accidental; they evoked both classical Rome and contemporary nationalist symbolism, as pine trees had become part of efforts to create landscapes that cemented Italian national identity.

The pine tree formation served a practical purpose, protecting a nearby village from landslides, while simultaneously projecting Fascist power across the landscape. This remarkable example illustrates how Latin became part of the physical fabric of Italy under Fascism. Lamers intends to further investigate how the word DVX was used in Fascist Italy in a forthcoming paper.

The ‘pineta Dux’ in ca. 2017. Image from MeteoWeb

A Forgotten Literary Movement

Lamers and Reitz-Joosse’s collaborative research goes beyond physical inscriptions to explore a previously unstudied body of Latin literature with explicitly Fascist themes. Between 1922 and 1943, Italy produced a notable body of Latin literature celebrating Fascism, including lyric odes praising Mussolini, prose orations extolling the regime, and epic poems about Italy’s colonial exploits in Africa. Their article ‘Lingua Lictoria: The Latin Literature of Italian Fascism’, published in 2016, marked the first comprehensive examination of this subject. Lamers, Reitz-Joosse, and their team have since then created a digital library of over 120 Fascist Latin texts, and continue to discover new material through careful examination of library holdings and archives.

Who were the people writing Latin poetry and prose about Mussolini and Fascism? Lamers and Reitz-Joosse identified several groups who contributed to this mechanism of Fascist propaganda. University professors of classics, such as Nicola Festa (who translated some of Mussolini’s speeches into Latin), lent their scholarly expertise to the Fascist cause. However, the largest group consisted of high school Latin teachers, who wrote both educational texts for schools and more ambitious creative works. Several Catholic clerics, some of whom were also teachers, contributed Latin compositions as well. The motivations behind these compositions varied widely. Some authors were genuinely enthusiastic about Fascism, while others responded to professional encouragement or even pressure from the regime.

Excerpt from the Codex Fori Mussolini, authored by Aurelio Giuseppe Amatucci in 1932 and concealed beneath the obelisk at the Foro Italico in Rome (more on the following page).

Making Latin Modern – and Fascist

Latin might seem like an antiquated choice for a movement that presented itself as revolutionary and modernist, but Lamers and Reitz-Joosse emphasize that Fascist intellectuals worked hard to position the ancient language as ideally suited to modern life. Latin enthusiasts, such as Carlo Vignoli, argued that the language was entirely capable of expressing modern concepts. Vignoli highlighted Latin’s use in the field of aviation —an important symbol of modernity— citing Latin mottoes on aeroplanes and in airports, as well as Latin inscriptions on monuments and medals.

Beyond mere modernisation, Latin was increasingly presented as a distinctively Fascist language. Aurelio Giuseppe Amatucci, a classicist and school inspector, claimed that Latin composition should be a constitutive part of the ‘reevocation of the Roman world’ that he considered one of Fascism’s great achievements. For Amatucci, using Latin to express ‘new sentiments, new thoughts, and new plans’ was ‘an elevated sign of regained national spirit’.

Mussolini himself reinforced this connection, declaring that Latin was ‘the language of our times, of our very difficult but also very beautiful Fascist times’, and that it placed Italians ‘under a serious obligation, because it is the language of a people of soldiers, of conquerors, of builders, of legislators, of victors’. While Mussolini’s knowledge of Latin was limited, Prof Lamers’ research has shown that the leader of Fascism cultivated the image that he was familiar with the language, using it in his speeches and writings to express political ideas.

Medal celebrating the Battle for Grain. 40 mm. AE. © Nomisma.

Mussolini’s Time Capsule

One of the most fascinating documents researched by Lamers and Reitz-Joosse concerns a hidden Latin text meant to secure Fascism’s legacy for future generations. In 1932, as part of the celebrations marking the tenth anniversary of Fascist rule, Mussolini unveiled a massive white marble obelisk at Rome’s new sports complex, the Foro Mussolini (today’s Foro Italico). Unknown to the cheering crowds, a metal box had been sealed inside the base of this monument. The box contained gold coins and a Latin text written on parchment: the Codex Fori Mussolini. This document, composed by Amatucci, presented a carefully crafted narrative of the rise of Italian Fascism and its leader. The text was deliberately hidden away so that it might be discovered in the distant future, when it would convey the Fascists’ own vision of their achievements and place in history to generations yet unborn.

Lamers and Reitz-Joosse performed the first detailed study of this remarkable text, providing a critical translation and analysis of the Codex. Their work illuminates not only how Italian Fascism sought to control its future reception, but also reveals new insights into the role Roman antiquity played in Fascist ideology and propaganda. The original document was written by hand on parchment, in humanist script, and decorated with miniatures by Enrico Brignoli in the workshop of Nestore Leoni, a famous calligrapher. This physical form evoked the Middle Ages and Renaissance, periods of Italian cultural prominence that were also important to Fascist national identity, all of which Latin could evoke.

The researchers note a fascinating paradox in the Codex’s function. While the Codex affirms the eternity of the obelisk, the only way it could be read would be if the monument was torn down. At that point, only the Codex itself would still be able to, in its words, ‘immortalise for eternity the outstanding achievements of Fascism’.

The Ethics of Publishing a Fascist Text Today

The research team faced an ethical dilemma in publishing the Codex and similar texts. Would they be helping its Fascist creators achieve exactly the kind of reception they craved? Lamers and Reitz-Joosse grappled with this concern, seeing it as important to put the Codex and similar propaganda texts in their proper contexts. By analysing the Fascist hijacking of Latin, they aim to contribute to an informed and critical reception of this text and other documents like it.

Lamers and Reitz-Joosse, together with their team, have been curating a volume featuring a selection of Latin texts from Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany, complete with English translations and annotations. They anticipate that this collection, titled Texts of Tyranny, will be made available in Open Access later this year or early next year. Co-edited by Dr Katharina-Maria Schön, the volume seeks to raise awareness of this difficult textual heritage, also beyond academic circles.

Understanding the Power of Language Propaganda

Through detailed analysis of these texts and their cultural contexts, Lamers and Reitz-Joosse have contributed to our understanding of the cultural politics of Fascism. Their work represents an important step toward understanding the complex role of Latin in political material culture, opening up further questions about how the language was received by different groups within Italian society, and how it compared to the use of ancient and historical languages by other political movements worldwide.