Aquileia and literature

Art & Culture

31 March 2020

Art & Culture

Aquileia and literature

The first to write about Aquileia were, of course, the ancient historians: Tito Livio, Velleius Paterculus, Strabo, Pliny the Elder, Tacitus and Herodian told of its Roman foundation in 181 BC, of how great and important it was for trade and for the defence of the borders to the east, of the emperors who repeatedly visited it and of the sieges to which it was subjected. Of these, two in particular immediately became legendary: that of 238 BC, when the god Belenus was seen fighting alongside the people of Aquileia against Maximinus Trax, and the devastating siege at the hand of Attila in 452 BC.
And it is right in the middle of this siege that Emmet Pennypacker found himself. He was a scientist and inventor of a time machine and protagonist of a story by Nat Schachner that is also an ironic anti-racist manifesto. The story, titled Ancestral voices, was first published in the science fiction journal Astounding Stories of Super-Science.
Having survived sieges and even the empire, Aquileia maintained its charisma over the centuries and did not fail to inspire other writers, from those closest to it such as Elio Bartolini (Racconti Aquileiesi) (Tales of Aquileia) to those as far away as Jorge Luis Borges: a coadjutor of Aquileia and one of its most famous Theologians.
Finally, we like to think that it is Aquileia that inspires one of its most famous citizens, Francesco Tullio-Altan, author of Pimpa, Cipputi and many other illustrations that have accompanied some unforgettable children's books.

Pictures by Alessandro Secondin