This essay aims to analyze how the myth of Rome was used by Mussolini to create a fascist specificity that coincided with a specificity of the Italian nation. Ritual practices, gestures, values and symbols were retaken, sometimes arbitrarily, in order to build a myth that generated new ambiguities and that, different from Nazism, constituted a hindrance to the survival of "romanity" after Mussolini.
Fascism; Ancient Rome; Myth; Religion of politics