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Hausmann and the linguist Paolo Di Giovine. Karen Hendrickson-Santospago converted my confusing instructions into a splendidly legible map. Those generous souls who read the manuscript and offered their extremely perceptive comments on it-Augusto Ferraiuolo, Cornelia (Nea) Mayer Herzfeld, Douglas Holmes, Guy Lanoue, Lilith Abdelwahab Mahmud, Maria Minicuci, Borden Painter, Miriam Shakow, and Claudio Sopranzetti-deserve special gratitude. Carlo Cellamare and Maria Minicuci also arranged for me to hold visiting appointments in their respective parts of the University of Rome-I ("La Sapienza") and engaged me in larger and extraordinarily productive discussions throughout these years of research, while Nea Herzfeld, constant companion in so many places, brought insight and a generously critical eye to this work as it progressed, besides cementing many of our shared friendships with the people of Monti and of Rome in general. At the University of Chicago Press, I am deeply indebted to my old friend T. David Brent, his extraordinarily efficient assistant Laura J. Avey, and my meticulous, understanding, and stylistically sensitive manuscript editor Mary Gehl. To the many other friends whose voices are heard with varying degrees of explicitness in these pages, or who proffered useful advice along the way, my debt is as deeply felt and appreciated as it is wide-ranging.

While the usual provisos about personal responsibility apply, I do genuinely want to thank the foundations that helped me bring this work through the main research phase. These are the National Endowment for the Humanities and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, which sequentially supported my sabbatical year research in 1999-2000. Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs generously supported a further leave in 2007 and thereby facilitated much of the writing for this project. My sojourns at the University of Melbourne also provided me with an invaluable retreat.

All unattributed quotations are my translations of remarks made by informants; I have, except in the case of unavoidable exceptions (such as public figures or individuals whose role received significant attention), avoided using their own personal names. Many of them spoke in a mixture of "standard language" and "dialect," and, while these mixed utterances have sometimes occasioned surprise on the part of educated local readers, they do represent habits of speech (notably code-switching) that are themselves useful evidence of subtly but ceaselessly shifting identity politics in social interactions.

When I began to toy with the idea of doing field research in Thailand, my departmental colleague Stanley J. Tambiah, a leading light in Thai studies, at first demurred and then showed some apparent discomfort with the idea-until he was satisfied that I would first pursue my interests in the comparison of Greek and Italian nationalisms. When I told him that I intended to go to Rome before I attempted anything substantive in Thailand and asked him for a letter of support for one of my fellowship applications, he immediately responded with all the extraordinary generosity and care for my scholarly life that had, it became entirely clear, animated his original concern and hesitation. Tambi, whose personal modesty and kindness are as legendary as his intellectual inspiration, has, quite simply, made all the difference. He also shares my enthusiasm for Rome as a city. This book is, in a very real sense, a response to the combination of intellectual stimulation and radical kindness that he has brought to all our encounters, and I dedicate it to him with the deepest and most grateful affection.

Cambridge, Mass.

May 2008

OVERTURE

Encountering the Eternal City

he three proud, angry women made their stately way down from the lofty offices of the Rome municipal administration overlooking a square designed by Michelangelo atop the remnants of the ancient Capitol. They crossed the triumphal road that Mussolini had cut through the ancient forums and headed determinedly toward