Subject
This humorous clip is from the 1982 film “Attila, flagella di Dio” (Attila, Scourge of God), directed by Franco Castellano and “Pipolo”, pseudonym of Giuseppe Moccia. The film is considered an example of the so-called trash genre of 1980s Italian cinema. Diego Abatantuono plays King Ardaric, who proclaims himself Attila and then marches on Rome in revenge for the sacking of his tribal village of Segrate. Hilariously, the barbarians mistake the aqueduct that from the mid-2nd century AD had supplied the Villa dei Quintili, for the “perforated” walls of the city, according to them now abandoned.
A large burial mound from the 1st century BC serving as the base of Torre Selce endows it with extraordinary grandeur, while the “flints”, in reality pieces of marble and travertine, assure its visibility from great distances. A reasonable hypothesis is that the tower would be the same “turris de Arcionibus or “de Arcione” noted in mediaeval sources, probably named in reference to the arches of the nearby Quintili aqueduct, or to the load-bearing features of its construction. By the 13th century AD, the tower had become known as Turris de Sclaceis, for the materials featured in its construction (scilicis = flint). From the acts of Pope Innocent IV in 1243 and of Pope Boniface VIII in 1299, we know that the tower had passed from Emperor Conrad III of Swabia to the Monks of St. Gregory in 1150. A drawing of the 17th century Alessandrino Cadastre shows the upper battlements and the defensive fore-wall, neither of which any longer exist.
Director
Castellano and Pipolo
Year
1982
