Numa Pompilius, the alleged second king of Rome, reportedly received from Jupiter a magical seal, a sacred shield in the figure of an eight (the ancile), to protect the city. Eighteenth-century creoles maintained that Mexico, altera Roma, had a pelta (crescent-shaped shield) of its own. Mexico’s sacred talisman was Our Lady of Guadalupe—Domini ancilla, the servant of God—whose miraculous image could be deployed to shield Mexico from the plague. Engraved in Latin in the frontispiece of El escudo de armas de Mexico (1746), this story shows that Iberians and their descendants understood their actions in the New World as both following in the footsteps of Rome and “topping off” Rome. Lupher’s Romans in a New World explores in fascinating detail the politics of these two interwoven themes.
Following in the footsteps of classicists such as Sabine MacCormack and David Quint, who have turned their considerable linguistic...
