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It is hard for me to know how I feel about Lauro Di Bosis.

I suffer from mixed feelings.

He was a well-to-do, handsome, and sensitive young poet.

His bust shows an intense, mustached, fine-featured face.

He flew over Rome one day during the early days of Mussolini and scattered leaflets over the city, denouncing the Fascists.

He was never heard of again.

He is thought either to have been killed by the Fascists as soon as he landed or to have killed himself by flying out to sea and crashing his plane.

He was, thus, an early and spectacular victim.

And there is something so wonderfully romantic about it all.

He really didn't know how to fly.

He had crashed on takeoff once before.

Gossip had it ( for gossip is the soul of Rome ) that a famous American dancer of the time had paid for both the planes.

It was absurd and dramatic.

It is remembered and has been commemorated by a bust in a park and a square in the city which was renamed Piazzo Lauro Di Bosis after the war.

Most Romans, even some postmen, know it by the old name.