Augustus in Brazil: A Classisist Delves into Brazilian Cultural History

Classics and Brazilian Studies: the case of Augustus in São Paulo

Penelope J. Goodman, University of Leeds

The bimillennium of Augustus

I am a Classicist in the broad sense, but my specialism is Roman history, and especially receptions of Roman history: that is, how people in later eras have responded to the Roman past. My current project is about the bimillennium of the Roman emperor Augustus’ birth, which fell on 23 September 1938, only a year before outbreak of the Second World War.

Fascist Italy spotted this anniversary as an opportunity as early as 1930. They mounted a huge programme of Augustan celebrations, using them to promote the cult of Mussolini and nuture Italian nationalism.

Their bimillennial events have been thoroughly studied, but over two hundred further events held outside Italy have remained largely unknown. My project has involved tracking those events down using physical archives and digitised newspaper databases, and analysing what they reveal about who was engaging with Augustus in the 1930s and what he meant to them.

My research has shown that many events held outside Italy were nonetheless engineered by Italians. Their diplomats especially used Augustus’ anniversary to pursue soft power in their host countries. Following international condemnation of Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, they were eager to persuade overseas audiences that Italy’s empire-building was actually a civilising mission, which is how the Roman empire was also widely perceived at the time.

But non-Italians were also keen to commemorate Augustus. The bimillennial events which I have identified are concentrated in Europe and places colonised by Europeans, including Latin America. People in these regions saw Augustus as part of their shared heritage, and wanted to commemorate him as way of reinforcing that heritage and identity at time when it was threatened by international tensions. This included rehearsing the same ideas which Italians were promoting about the ancient Roman empire as source of civilisation.

Augustus in São Paulo

In Brazil, a cluster of Augustan bimillennial events took place in São Paulo. A series of eighteen public lectures was delivered by Antonio Piccarolo, an Italian immigrant and writer. These presented Augustus as a spreader of civilisation, occasionally drawing direct parallels between his empire and Europe’s colonisation of Brazil which suggested a similar process.

A bronze replica copy of the famous Prima Porta statue of Augustus was also dedicated in the city. This had been donated by the Italian government to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of São Paulo’s state-sponsored immigration programme, which had attacted large numbers of Italians to live in the state.

The statue was dedicated in front of a crowd of around 5000 people by São Paulo’s city Prefect, accompanied by his wife (herself from an Italian family), and Italy’s Ambassador to Brazil. An associated programme of cultural events was also organised, including further lectures and an evening of Italian music.

The central role of Italians in this activity reflects the impact of São Paulo’s immigration programme. By the 1930s, around 600,000 Italians were living there, amounting to about 35% of the population. This Italian diaspora population represented a large and receptive audience for events about Augustus, and the Italian state and its representatives were keen to make use of it.

Events like the statue dedication offered a way of reinforcing Italian emigrants’ emotional and cultural ties to the motherland, thus keeping them active as a local soft power asset. Should war break out, the same people might even constitute a hard power asset in the form of conscripts willing to fight for Italy.

But Brazilians were an important secondary audience. Persuading them to view Italy or its Fascist leadership sympathetically also had soft power value. The Italian Ambassador, Vincenzo Lojacono, clearly had such goals in mind. At the statue dedication, he spoke of Augustus as a symbol of ‘serene authority’ (serena autoridade) who still offered a guide to nations striving after civilisation, and stated explicitly that Brazil’s authoritarian President, Getúlio Vargas, was a similar figure.

Indeed, Brazilian-born individuals were also involved in the celebrations, suggesting that Italy had already won friends locally through the figure of Augustus. Several academics contributed to the programme of events, and when Spencer Vampré, Professor of Roman Law, introduced the statue dedication, he spoke of the ‘increasingly intimate friendship between Brazil and the noble Italian nation’ (a amizade, cada vez mais intima, entre o Brasil e a nobre Nação italiana).

Getting up to speed as a subject outsider

My project has involved looking at Augustan events like those in São Paulo across thirty-eight different countries. While my knowledge of Augustus’ reception history gives me a consistent point of entry, I am always very reliant on the work of specialists to help me understand the cultural and historical context in each country.

Typically, I have found myself working across four categories of bibliography. At an orientational level, I have used work on local traditions of engagement with Classical past, which for Latin America has meant the work of Andrew Laird especially. I have also needed to get up to speed on the general culture and history of each country, especially in the 1930s. For this, I have read undergraduate-level material such as introductory histories or companions.

At a more specific level, the prominence of Italians and their agenda within the bimillennial commemorations means that I always need to know about the diplomatic relationship between each country and Fascist Italy. Thankfully, I have been able to find something along those lines for more or less every country I have worked on, sometimes written by Italians and sometimes scholars from the countries where the events took place.

Finally, I have occasionally been able to find published work on the actual events which I am studying. This is rare because so many are completely forgotten, but the history of the statue of Augustus in São Paulo had been the subject of an article published by Giovanni Pando Bueno, a Master’s student from the University of São Paulo. I am very grateful for his work!

Beyond published material, I have of course also made use of the expertise of my colleagues here at the University of Leeds. Both Steph Dennison and Thea Pitman have kindly read my draft work on Brazil and Latin America, and made helpful comments and suggestions in response. I’m very pleased to have been able to return the favour by sharing these insights into the role of Brazil and Brazilian Studies within my work.