2000th Birth Anniversary of Augustus (Bimillenario Augusteo).

Description: Series of 10 stamps with 10 subjects. Impression 120.000.
Date of issue: September 23, 1937. Valid up to April 30, 1939.

Airmail series

The 2000th anniversary of Augustus was marked with huge public arrangements.
The fascist regime intended to spread Italian civilisation and order throughout the Mediterranean and North Africa, as their Roman forefathers had done before them. The cult of "Romanità", the heritage of ancient Rome, was perhaps the most striking feature of the fascist regime. The fascists idealised Imperial Rome, and Mussolini promised to create a new empire in which his people would recapture the Roman tradition of sacrifice and discipline. Augustus became emperor, princeps, by destiny, the same destiny that made Mussolini not princeps, but "Il Duce", the leader of the new Italy.

Augustus had brought peace to the World, so would Mussolini. Augustus had ended a civil war. Mussolini had brought order to a country in chaos. Augustus was one of the greatest leaders the world had seen. Mussolini had the same ambitions. Augustus had created an Empire for Rome, so had Mussolini.

All stamps have strongly edited quotations from Augustus' Monumentum Ancyraneum, Augustus own description of all his deeds to the benefit of the Roman people. A modern copy of the inscription decorated the outer wall of the platform on which a strongly reconstructed Ara Pacis, the Alter of Peace, was erected, in front of the newly cleared Augustean Mausuleum in Campo Marzio in Rome. The "Ara Pacis" and the surroundings, called Piazza Augusto Imperatore, was opened for the public on September 23rd, 1937, on Augustus' birthday, but the construction work continued to the end of 1942.

In the upper left corner the arms of Savoy with fasces.

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Date created: 22/03/00 11:42:36