Abstract
In an interview with William Rees-Mogg, Berlusconi revealed that he had two portraits hanging in his office—those of Mrs Thatcher and of the Emperor Justinian. The place allotted to Mrs Thatcher, the prime exponent of free market economics of our times, can hardly cause surprise, but that given to Justinian is less easily explicable. Berlusconi is not known for his passion for the history and politics of the Byzantine Empire, so the Justinian on whom Berlusconi rests his eyes at critical moments must be the Justinian of Dante, whom Berlusconi would have studied in school. Dante gave Justinian a place in Paradiso as the very prototype of the law-giver and founder of a new political and legal order, so Berlusconi's cult of Justinian can be taken as indicative of a self-image as founder of new order. But there is another, more covert factor. Democracy in any sense was alien to Justinian, who as Emperor of the East enjoyed a sway unknown to any leader of a modern democratic state, and one paralleled in western societies only by the absolute power afforded to the owner of a contemporary business empire, like Ford Corporation, ICI or indeed Fininvest; or the leader of an idiosyncratic, autocratic political movement like Forza Italia.
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