Fu vera gloria? La fortuna d’Augusto nella storia della letteratura italiana

Cavalieri, Marco [UCL]

This paper deals with the destiny of the first Roman emperor through the Italian literature, from the 13th century to the early 1940s of the 20th century. The aim is to collect a reasoned and diachronic anthology of texts, selected through a non-systematic analysis of the main (but not only) Italian authors or the ones whose works, especially political and religious, could a priori not avoid the confrontation with the Augustan model, directly or by implication. The texts analysis, also based on historical and archaeological criticism about Augustus, showed how his figure, although in some respects ambiguous and chameleonic already in ancient times, goes through a lot of literature with fluctuating historical evaluations and ideological reinterpretations but always with a constant Fortuna.