A Nationalist Reading of the Classical Past: the Historia de Roma of Ernesto Palacio
Abstract
For the writers of the Argentine nationalist right, the classical tradition is a crucial matter. Historia de Roma (1939) by Ernesto Palacio is no exception: this small text, a school manual, is an example of the way in which Argentine nationalism imagined the Greco-Roman tradition in order to discuss contemporary politics and history. The appropiation of the classical legacy allowed them to postulate a certain image of «the West» and to legitimize their own translations from modern European literatures. The purpose of this article is to analyze this invention of the classical past made by Ernesto Palacio and other nationalist writers, and to briefly discuss why, since the return of democracy in 1983, the Argentine rigth has almost completely stopped to refer to Greco-Roman tradition.
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