But it was Italian nationalism that helped d’Annunzio become not merely a celebrity, but “Il Vate,” or The Bard, as his adoring fans called him. The country had been unified just a few decades earlier, and d’Annunzio’s poems envisioned the newborn Kingdom of Italy as the long-awaited inheritor to the great Roman Empire. Civilization, he argued, had become feminized and soft, but in this idealized new Rome, men could become fierce warriors once more. He gave political speeches at ancient ruins, pushing for Italy’s entrance into World War I, demanding that such blood and fire would help “sweep away all the filth!” and birth a new, better, braver order. Admirers would often write such speeches down, parading through the streets with his pages. But other than a short-lived parliamentary tenure, d’Annunzio had never held high office.

Fiume changed all that. On Sept. 12, 1919, flanked by a few black-clad former army buddies, known as “arditi,” d’Annunzio marched on the city — over the exasperated objections of the Italian government. “Ecce homo,” he announced from the governor’s mansion, echoing the words of Pontius Pilate in the Gospel of John when he recognizes that Jesus is the Messiah. D’Annunzio was saying it about himself.