Ancient Historians and Fascism: How to React Intellectually to Totalitarianism (or Not)

During 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 manipulations and exploitations. On the contrary ancient Greece was devalued and also in academic field partly marginalized. That is the context in which a very significant debate arose about ancient Greek liberty among Gateano De Sanctis, then the most important ancient historian and an open anti-fascist, and some of his students as Aldo Ferrabino, Arnaldo Momigliano and Piero Treves. Ferrabino was the most sensitive to some themes of Fascism and of Gentile's authoritarian political theory; in Momigliano De Sanctis' methodological teaching meets partly Croce's and Hegel's concept of history with a universal perspective of ancient history, to which his Jew education is not irrelevant; after his death there has been some harsh controversy regarding his relationship with fascist politics. Piero Treves was born in a very anti-fascist family and was also himself fed by Croce's philosophy; his book on Demosthenes was a clear anti-fascist praise of Greek liberty. So Greek history was then the field of a lively confrontation on the key values of political freedom and liberty of thought. Learning from the past means also learning from how scholars of the preceding generations had studied the past because that allows us to liberate ourselves from the short-terms passions of the contemporary age.