This is certainly not the place to discuss Steiner and to make precise the importance of his doctrine—on that, we have already written in one of our works, Maschea e volto dello spiritualismo contemporaneo [Mask and Face of Contemporary Spirituality]. Here, instead, only the highlights can be mentioned, which are those steinerian views that noticeably influence Cesaro’s interpretation of the origins and mission of Rome. They certainly belong to that which, in such an author, from the point of view indicated, must be considered heretical or heterodox, insusceptible, in any case, of being in conformity with traditional teachings; they are the fruit, instead, of an individual interpretation, therefore arbitrary like those of various modern philosophies of history. We will note only some of the main points.

Cesaro’s merit is his ability to recognize the importance, for the exploration of the origins, of the fundamental opposition of the myths, cults, and symbols of an olympian-uranian character, solar, virile, heroic and regal, to those that are telluric, chthonic, infernal, lunar, feminine, and priestly. But even here, Cesaro overlooks two important points.

1. It eludes him that this opposition is not to be considered, in an absolute way, originary, but rather consequentially, inherent to the phases and determined cycles of civilization, during which eras a process of involution and dissociation already occurred. The primordial cycle of hyperborean civilization, progenitor of the principle forms of the Nordic-Aryan civilization, was superior to and anterior to similar oppositions. So, for example, for the point of view that is of more interest to us, there was even a synthesis between the regal and sacerdotal elements, between spirituality and virility. The ignorance of this point constitutes a serious preliminary question, for its allowing a margin to evolutionist ideas, like those that have a fundamental part in the steinerian ideology. Hesiod’s teaching, which finds an exact confirmation in a series of other Aryan traditions, speaks clearly in this regard: the civilization of the heroes does not constitute an innovation nor, in any case, progress, but rather a restoration, a return, a taking up again of the primordial Olympic tradition entered in a phase of involution. Instead, it is really a progress that, in heroic forms, to which the same Roman civilization itself belongs, which Cesaro recognizes; therefore, since he starts from the above mentioned opposition, he erroneously considers it originary and investigates the points in which, in history, there had been a surpassing of it. The true value of Rome is instead a restoration, an attempt to take up again in a universal body an original spirituality of the hyperborean and solar type, an abortive attempt at the moment of the putrefaction and asiatization of the empire of the Caesars.
2. In every way, even in the reference to the stages in which the mentioned duality constituted the dominant motive, Cesar overlooked an important element, which is the relation of the visions and cults, of one type or another, to different racial factors, mixed or coming into conflict in the events of the origins. In place of trying to interpret the transformations of the various civilizations and the various religious ideas in this way, Cesaro conceives a type of general abstract development, of an evolutionary character, strictly adhering to steinerian schemes. The real problem is that the same methodological value and the same significance of the oppositions we indicated, in a similar way, turn out to be almost irreparably compromised. The predominance, and almost the arising, at a given moment, in ancient Mediterranean spirituality, of cults of a telluric, feminine-demonic, Dionysian character, opposed to the heroic and Olympian forms, does not signify for Cesaro that which must be thought even from an almost positive point of view: a type of reconquest of the substratum of inferior pre-aryan and anti-aryan races and civilizations against higher forms, issuing from the primordial traditions that, initially, had subjected them (for example, in Greece with the descent of the Dorians and Achaeans). For Cesaro, that signifies instead an evolutionary phase in a general predetermined process, predetermined no less than for the coming of Christianity.

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