Dalla Roma imperiale alla Bologna principesca: la vocazione attualizzante del commento beroaldiano a Svetonio

The commentary to Suetonius by Philippo Beroaldo - the second among the four great commentaries of the Bolognese professor, composed after the one dedicated to Propertius, and before those treating Cicero's "Tusculanae" and Apuleius' "Asinus aureus" - can be read also as a "speculum principis" intended for its dedicatee, the eldest son of Bentivoglio's family, his pupil Annibal. the very abundant commentary of the Bolognese professor, besides containing linguistic, grammatical and learned notes, is rich in numerous modernizing digressions, that aims to construct bridges between the economic, social and cultural aspects of Roman history described by the Latin historian and the corresponging events in Bologna during Bentivoglio's regime. By speaking, for istance, of Giovanni Bentivoglio as a new Vespasian, and of his wife Ginevra Sforza as a new Agrippina, these digressions have of course a eulogistic goal, if we read them together with the great "praefatio" to the commentary, they contribute to make this book one of the greatest cultural manifestation of the Bentivoglio's use of propaganda, a practice that became in fact more and more extreme after the foiled conspiracy of the Malvezzi family against the Bentivoglio (1488).