Mystic Chords of Memory Binding All Italians

Italy was reunited in 1861. However, the mystic chords of memory binding all Italians predate Garibaldi, Cavour and Mazzini.

When the Kingdom of Italy came into being in 1861, it marked the rebirth of a nation-state forged by the Romans in defeating the Gauls at Telamon (Talamone). By March 1, 222 BC, protective colonies were established at Placentia and Cremona — and from the Alps to Sicily, Italy was one. Caesar Augustus felt and encouraged a new patriotic feeling for Italy, echoed by Virgil's insistence on the country's Italian identity. The emperor's pro-Italian, pro-Roman worldview resulted in Augustus's title: “Pater Patriae” (Father of the Fatherland). By the time of Christ, this political unity had become a cultural one as well. To create Italy was the first great historical achievement of Rome; to make a political and cultural unity of the whole Mediterranean world was to repeat this task on a larger scale.

The Augustan Age also marked the start of the Pax Romana (27 BC-180 AD) — a two-century period of peace and prosperity that has yet to be equaled — as well as widespread reforms in the laws, civil administration and governance of Italy. The Roman Peace stretched from Scotland to the Persian Gulf. When the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 AD, Italy came under the yoke of foreign occupation. Italian unity broke down in the 6th century in the wake of the Longobard invasion, leading to centuries of division. Reunification would not occur until the 19th century. But Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarch and Niccolo Machiavelli — among many others — kept the flame of patriotism and the dream of Italian unity alive.

Dante Alighieri's poetry went hand in hand with his patriotism. In addition to spawning the Italian vernacular — and writing one of Western civilization's most influential masterworks — Dante inspired a national reawakening that would become the Risorgimento. Dante despised the foreign occupiers who had dismembered the birthplace of the Pax Romana and the Renaissance.

In The Divine Comedy, Dante chose Virgil, the author of The Aeneid, as his guide through hell — but not as a mere literary device. Virgil's Aeneid was an ode to the unity and greatness of Roman Italy. What Garibaldi, Cavour and Mazzini achieved in 1861 was the rebirth of this classical polity. And Dante Alighieri played no small role in forging this reborn Italy.

The Renaissance sparked the rebirth of Italian civilization, which led to Galileo's modern scientific method, Da Vinci's wondrous technologies, Michelangelo's epochal art and the age of exploration as Columbus, Caboto, Verrazzano and Vespucci opened up the new world in the 15th century.

The Italian powers also entered a period of peace and cooperation, forming the Italic League. But by the end of this same century, the Italic League collapsed when France invaded Italy. There was no greater advocate of Italian unification during this time than Machiavelli. In The Prince, he invoked Petrarch's verse that “ancient and heroic pride in true Italian hearts has never died”.

The Italian spirit that animated Augustus and Virgil, and which inspired Dante, Petrarch and Machiavelli, is the same spirit that guided the Risorgimento and led to the reunification of Italy.

References:
• Virgil (Aeneid, 1st century BC)
• Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy, 1320)
• Petrarch (Invective Against a Detractor of Italy, 1373)
• Petrarch (Italia Mia in Il Canzoniere, 1336-1374)
• Niccolò Machiavelli (The Prince, 1532)