Conclusion

As it is well-known, for many years, Italian speakers and journalists used to argue very much about the Roman Empire, comparing and confusing ancient and modern conditions. Thus, the natural reaction of thinking people was a wide-spread distrust of every fact concerning Roman history. But, at the same time, the value of the Roman Empire appeared a problem of the modern moral and political conscience. It was easy to find an able or a prudent answer to the continual questions of one's own pupils about the real value of the Roman Empire and of its most representative figures. It was difficult to give a true answer. The same difficulty I found increased when I was asked to write a sketch of the History of the Roman Empire for the Italian Encyclopaedia. The difficulty consisted, obviously enough, in eliminating modern interferences from the question, while at the same time conserving for the question the character of a problem of the modern conscience. What has no value, has no history. Yet the values of history are not matter for polemics, but for plain knowledge. The spontaneous result was that the interpretation of the Roman Empire became more and more a point of evaluation of Pagan Civilisation in its decline and of Christian Civilisation in its dawn. The problem was transplanted into its proper ground: it was the very problem of the foundation of our modern life. I could perceive in my pupils a keener interest and less suspicion. (Momigliano 1996: xx-xxi)

Thus Momigliano, in Cambridge, in 1940. As other chapters in this volume demonstrate, antiquity has long been used to impart value and authority to the modern world. That this use of the ancient world becomes particularly visible - and seemingly problematic or anomalous - when made by or under Nazism or fascism is an implication that appears to inform many studies on these matters. Yet this is surely the consequence of our deep historical fascination with and repulsion for the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century (given their impact on the politics and culture of the postwar era). As I hope to have implied in this chapter, the uses of Rome and Greece in the ideologies of National Socialist Germany or fascist Italy were, on the whole, embedded in specific and longstanding national circumstances. It is undeniable, of course, that the establishment of authoritarian governments bent on molding national culture crystallized and - more importantly - catalyzed certain aspects of these appropriations. But these will be understood, and finally confronted, only when returned to the context of the classical tradition in its entirety.

Katie Fleming

NOTES

See Brunner (1970), answered by Schnur (1970) and Villard (1972). For studies, in English, of the varying appropriations of antiquity in these regimes see Ades et al. (1995); Aicher (2000); Kopff (2000); Kostof (1978); Lane (2001); Lebrecht Schmidt (2001); Losemann (1999); Marchand (1996); Quinn (2000); Rawson (1969); Scobie (1990); Stone (1999); Thomas (2000, 2001b); Visser (1992); Wyke (1997b, 1999a, 1999b); and Ziolkowski (1993). There is, of course, a substantial amount of important work done in German and Italian, of which Losemann (1977) and Canfora (1979, 1980) are seminal. For a comprehensive bibliography see Naf (2001). Der Neue Pauly contains a number of relevant entries. For Fascism and Nazism in general, see, e. g., Kershaw (1987, 2000); Mosse (1964, 1980, 1999); Nolte (1966); Griffin (1991, 2003); Weber (1964). More relevant to this article is the critical relationship between Fascism and culture and the nature of the ‘‘Fascist aesthetic:’’ see, e. g., Affron and Antliff (1997); Brenner (1963); Campiglio et al. (2003); Cannistraro (1975); Falasca-Zamponi (1997); Gentile (1993); Golsan (1992); Griffin (1996, 2001); Kemal and Gaskell (2000); Kuhnl (1996); Malvano (1988); Millon and Nochlin (1978); Petropoulos (1996); Spotts (2002).

Ronald Syme noted the parallels implicitly in his important 1939 study The Roman Revolution.

Although attributed at the time to Mussolini, this piece was in fact written by the general editor, the neo-idealist philosopher Giovanni Gentile.

See, e. g., Canfora (1979) for this debate played on in the reception of Tacitus’ Germania. My thanks to Chris Whitton for allowing me to read his unpublished 2004 Cambridge MPhil thesis on this subject, ‘‘The Reception of Tacitus’ Germania in the Third Reich.’’

The context for this remark is important. It was made, at the 1929 Nuremberg Party-Day rally, in praise of proactive euthanasia as a means of state-controlled eugenics.

Nor indeed was it limited to Germany. See, e. g., Leoussi (1998).

See, however, Schache (1979) for an account of more pluralistic influences, at least in the planning of the Berlin Museum.

Jaeger in fact used this term only twice in his writing, although in rather significant places. See Jaeger (1933, 1934). For a contemporary response, see Rudiger (1970). Calder (1983) cites Gisela Miiller, DieKulturprogrammatik des dritten Humanismus als Teil imperialistischer Ideologie in Deutschland zwischen erstem Weltkrieg und Faschismus (The cultural aims and objectives of Third Humanism as a part of imperialist ideology in Germany between the First World War and Fascism), as demonstrating the racist elements of Paideia I (particularly its introduction).

A Companion to the Classical Tradition Edited by Craig W. Kallendorf Copyright © 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd