Ancient Fascism

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 65, 20 September 1940, Page 6

Ancient Fascism

Y this time the chaotic conditions in Rome after Philippi, which are of such complexity that it is impossible to speak of them in any detail, had resolved into a duel for power between M. Antonius (Shakespeare’s Mark Antony) and Augustus, Caesar’s heir. There was a temporary truce: a division of spoils, Augustus took the west and Rome; Antony the rich East. Augustus proved the wiser. In Italy, by propaganda, violence, intimidation, he created something more than the semblance of an Italian nationalism. A ready comparison would be the rise of German fascism. The statement of Augustus: "All Italy of its own accord swore an oath of allegiance to me and chose me as its leader in the war of Actium," has to us a strongly reminiscent ring. There is a curious parallel, too, in what was one of the strongest planks of Augustus’s propaganda against Antony. Hitler appeals to race hatreds against the Jews: Augustus did much the same in stirring up the latent opposition of West and East. The person of Cleopatra was the focus of his propaganda. It is sufficiently established that Cleopatra, under whose influence Mark Antony was popularly supposed to lie, was neither young nor beautiful, and Egypt’s wealth and supplies would have provided the soundest motive for Antony’s basing his armies there, had no Cleopatra existed. But, of course to Rome, suitably primed by Augustus, she was a monster, and the occasion of her death in 30 B.C. was marked by national thanksgiving and patriotic rejoicing. Our poet Horace celebrated the occasion with an ode. Nunc est bibendum, he cried: now is a time for mirth and drinking and festivity, for the fatale monstrum, the foreign queen is dead. (Dr. K. J. Sheen, " Horace and the Augustan Age,’ 4YA, September 10.)