The Great Livy Delusion, 1924

In the summer of 1924, a young Neapolitan scholar, Mario di Martino Fusco, claimed to have discovered the long-lost 107 books of Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita, sparking an international media frenzy. Announced prematurely by his supposed ally, Francesco Ribezzo, the claim captivated the scholarly world until it was definitively debunked. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary newspaper reports and scholarly reactions, this article reconstructs the unfolding of the Livy delusion: from Martino’s initial assertion, through journalistic hysteria and academic opportunism, to the final official inquiry revealing a misreading of a fourteenth-century reference. The episode not only ruined Martino’s career but also exposed the vulnerabilities of scholarly ambition, press sensationalism and nationalist rivalries in Fascist Italy. It remains one of the most extraordinary cases of literary delusion in classical scholarship, illustrating both the enduring allure of lost texts and the dangers of credulity and pride.