oa Voor anker in drijfzand

Italian Fascism anchored its revolutionary ideology in the Roman past, embedding and legitimising changes in every sphere of life through an appeal to a supposedly shared Roman heritage. In this article, we scrutinise these Fascist dynamics of anchoring through an analysis of the Mussolini obelisk in Rome and the Latin text hidden below it: Aurelio Amatucci’s Codex Fori Mussolini. We focus especially on the Fascist manipulation of the obelisk tradition, the significance of Amatucci’s choice of language, and his use of ancient authors within the Codex. We argue that the ‘ground’ in which monument and text are anchored is fundamentally unstable: the Roman past itself is a dynamic and adaptable construction. Obelisk and Codex selectively evoke and (re-)combine a multiplicity of elements – from antiquity to the twentieth century, from the Renaissance to the Risorgimento. In doing so, obelisk and text shape the very tradition in which they anchor.