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Liberty Ancient and Modern in Twentieth- Century Italy

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Liberty Ancient and Modern in Twentieth- Century Italy chapter 9 Liberty Ancient and Modern in Twentieth- Century Italy Between Classical Scholarship and Political Theory Dino Piovan An analysis of the reception of Athenian democracy in twentieth- century Italy cannot avoid focusing on the very lively discussion about the value of Greek freedom that arose in the 1930s among some historians of the ancient world.1 At that time Fascism had already abolished the liberal regime and begun to build a totalitarian state, even if the old constitution, released by Piedmont’s king Carlo Alberto in 1848 (the so- called Statuto albertino), was formally still in effect. During the Fascist regime in Italy (1922–1943) the cult of ancient Rome became part of the official ideology and Roman history and culture were the object of heavy manipulation and exploitation. On the contrary, ancient Greece was less easy to abuse, therefore it was underestimated and partly marginalized even in the academic field.2 This was the context of the debate about Greek liberty, that is, Athenian democracy, as it was mentioned when politicians and academics spoke of ancient Greece. It is not casual that the word liberty and not democracy was usually employed. Fascism had abolished both liberty and democracy so the philo- Fascist historians did not distinguish between them, whereas the non- Fascist intellectuals were influenced by the political thought of Benedetto Croce (1866–1952). As it is well known, Croce had a complex relationship with democracy. Before Fascism went to power, in fact, Croce had been a critic of democracy or, to put it in clearer terms, he was against “the populist theory of democracy stemming from Rousseau, or 1 I am thankful to Carlo Franco and Giovanni Giorgini for their comments and suggestions and to Lucy Simonato for helping me to revise my English. The translations from the quoted passages, originally in Italian, are my own. 2 About the Fascist cult of Rome see Giardina (2000), 212– 296; Belardelli (2005), 206– 236; Nelis (2013) and Nelis (2018); about Greek history studies during the Fascist age see Pio- van (2018a). About the Italian intellectuals in the face of Fascisms and anti-Fascism see the very keen and well-balanced essays by Angelo Ventura, now collected in Ventura (2017). © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004443006_011 Liberty Ancient and Modern in Twentieth-Century Italy 299 what might be called simply egalitarianism” in favor of a liberalism that for him “means primarily two things— pluralism and anti- egalitarianism”.3 At the beginning Croce was not against Fascism since, as many other Italian Liberals, politicians as well as intellectuals, he was convinced that it would be only a short pause in the constitutional government and a bulwark against the dan- ger of Bolshevism. It was only after the totalitarian laws of 1925, when many liberties were suppressed, that Croce changed unequivocally his stance so far as to become the moral and cultural leader of the anti- Fascist opposition. At the same time, he began to deeply revise and elaborate his political concep- tion and to write historical works such as the History of Italy and the History of Europe that had a large impact both on the anti- and the non- Fascist cul- ture.4 These works influenced also the students of the new generation who had not known the liberal age, such as Arnaldo Momigliano (1908–1987) and Piero Treves (1911– 1992). Momigliano and Treves, then very young scholars, were both students of Gaetano De Sanctis (1870– 1957), who was then the major Italian professor of ancient history and, incidentally, one of the very few university professors who refused to take the oath of loyalty to Fascism in 1931 and was consequent- ly dismissed from his chair in Rome.5 De Sanctis himself was another protag- onist in this discussion, together with another of his former students, Aldo Ferrabino (1892– 1972), already a well- known scholar and then professor in Padua. As we shall see, the debate among them was much more than a con- troversy among specialists of the ancient world, as it included many different intertwined perspectives: philological and historical analysis, theory of his- tory and philosophy, ideological and political suggestions. Maybe it was then that Greek history happened to be the field of a very dense confrontation on the values of political freedom and liberty of thought as ever before in Italian culture. 3 Finocchiaro (1999), 131, 132. 4 Croce’s fundamental work on theory of history is Croce (1989 [1917]), while during the Fas- cist age his principal books on politics and history are Croce (1931) and Croce (1966 [1938]) and the most relevant historiographical ones are Croce (1928) and Croce (1991 [1932]). About Croce’s theory and practice of history see Chabod (1952); Cantimori (1971); Sasso (1986); Rob- erts (1999); Viti Cavaliere (1999); Sasso (2017). About Croce’s political thought see Bobbio (1955); Matteucci (1992); Finocchiaro (1999). For a general profile see Galasso (1990); for a concise introduction in English see Trafton and Verdicchio (1999). 5 About the rejection of the Fascist oath see De Sanctis (1970) 143– 157; Goetz (1982); Goetz (2000)..
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