CHAPTER 36
Becoming Roman Again
Roman Ethnicity and Italian Identity
Valentina Follo
Introduction: Unification
With the fanfare of Italy’s anniversary celebrations still echoing in the collective ear,
the timing of this publication would seem especially auspicious. Ironically, however, the
recent commemoration of 150 years of unification has arguably highlighted the country’s
disunity and current conflictual state of affairs as much as its cohesion. A salient example
occurred when members of different political parties—some of whom were government
ministers at the time—sparked heated controversy by publically withdrawing from any
form of participation in the yearlong festivities. Their further refusal to rise when the
Italian national anthem was sung may be counted among their most emblematic gestures.
Leaving all political considerations aside, these episodes have nonetheless drawn atten-
tion to one of the most formidable challenges Italy had to face early on during the
theoretical stages of its unification process, not to mention the moment the country
achieved political unity. It is no coincidence that the following quote attributed to one
of the fathers of the Risorgimento still enjoys popularity: “We’ve created Italy, now we’ve
got to create Italians”^1 (Gigante 2011: 914). In this chapter, I will discuss the key role
that the city of Rome and the concept ofRomanitasplayed in inventing, theorizing, and
then realizing a national Italian identity.
With its characteristic boot shape extended into the Mediterranean Sea, Italy presents
a geographically coherent picture, possessing clearly discernable natural borders (Galli
della Loggia 1998: 7–11). Today, this picture is in stark contrast with the actual internal
divisions that run deeply throughout the peninsula, just as they did, albeit to a greater
extent, at the time of the unification process (Floris 2009). The fall of the Roman Empire
had given rise to a loss of uniformity not only in political terms, but perhaps more so in
linguistic and cultural terms as well. To make matters worse, “Italy never enjoyed the
A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean, First Edition. Edited by Jeremy McInerney.
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.