Biondo Flavio’s Roma Triumphans (1459) was the fruit of many years of engagement with the city of Rome and the complexity of Roman history: it was a key text of Italian humanism and the basis of the long-lasting discipline of antiquarianism. But despite its originality and cultural influence, it remains little known, because we can read it completely only in ancient editions: just in 2016 appeared the first volume, edited by Agata Pincelli, in the I Tatti Renaissance Library. The Invention of Rome presents a range of strategic explorations of the work’s nature, contents, and influence.

The volume has three parts. The first part (“Context, Genre, and Purpose”) contains three chapters. Chapter 1, by Anne Raffarin (“La célébration des triomphes de Rome dans la Roma instaurata et la Roma Triumphans de Flavio Biondo”), emphasizes the importance of Biondo’s conception of the ancient Roman triumph for his presentation of the triumph of the restored Christian Rome. Chapter 2, by Frances Muecke (“The Genre(s) and the Making of Roma Triumphans”), investigates the nature of the work (“history,” “antiquarianism,” “treatise,” “encyclopedia”?): in assembling his work Biondo drew on a variety of ancient or late antique scholarly works, which also leave their structural traces. Chapter 3, by Angelo Mazzocco (“The Rapport Between the Respublica Romana and the Respublica Christiana in Biondo Flavio’s Roma Triumphans”), insists on the differences between the two epilogues of Roma Instaurata and Roma Triumphans. The Christian state is measured against the ancient Roman state, and Biondo’s disillusion is a reaction to the failure of the European leaders at the Congress of Mantua (1459) to deal with the Ottoman threat to Europe.

The second part (“Mores et instituta”) has six chapters. Chapter 4, by Frances Muecke (“Gentiles nostri: Roman Religion and Roman Identity in Biondo Flavio’s Roma Triumphans”), examines the inherent ambiguity in Biondo’s attitude to the religion of the Romans, and his references to “survivals” of Roman religious life. James Hankins’s “Biondo Flavio on the Roman Republic” (chapter 5) sets Biondo’s reconstruction of republican institutions in the contexts of contemporary historico-political thought. Chapter 6, by Giuseppe Marcellino, “Un excursus umanistico sulle letterature dell’antichità: Biondo Flavio e i classici (Roma Triumphans IV, pp. 96–100),” analyzes Biondo’s uses of classical sources. Ida Gilda Mastrorosa’s “Roman Military Discipline in Biondo Flavio’s Roma Triumphans: Punishments and Rewards” (chapter 7) highlights the central importance of discipline for Roman military success. Maurizio Campanelli’s “Il libro IX della Roma Triumphans: Una querelle umanistica degli antichi e dei moderni?” (chapter 8) examines the topics of the monumental remains of Rome. Peter Fane-Saunders addresses the same arguments in chapter 9, “Pyres, Villas, and Mansions: Architectural Fragments in Biondo Flavio’s Roma Triumphans.”

Part 3 (“Reception”) contains four chapters. Maria Agata Pincelli (chapter 10, “Librariis certatim transcribere contendentibus: La tradizione manoscritta e la prima ricezione della Roma Triumphans di Biondo Flavio”) examines some aspects of the transmission of the text. Paul Gwynne’s “Triumphs and Triumphators in the Wake of the Roma Triumphans” (chapter 11) comes back to Biondo’s call for a Crusade and a new triumph of Rome. Anne Raffarin’s “Fulvio lecteur de Biondo: Questions religieuses dans la Roma Triumphans et les Antiquitates Urbis” (chapter 12) studies Andrea Fulvio’s Antiquitates Urbis (1527). Finally, William Stenhouse (chapter 13, “Flavio Biondo and Later Renaissance Antiquarianism”) explores the survival of Roma Triumphans in the sixteenth century.

The book presents many important contributions for a deeper knowledge of Biondo’s work: it can be a useful introduction to the next critical edition of Roma Triumphans, by Fabio Della Schiava and Marc Laureys for the Edizione nazionale delle opere di Biondo Flavio (Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo, Rome). It is only surprising that the editors, at the beginnings of their introduction, say that Roma Triumphans is “the last of Biondo Flavio’s major works after Roma instaurata (1446) and Italia illustrata (1453)”: they completely forget Historiarum ab Inclinatione Romani Imperii Decades, the work of Biondo’s life.