I can’t imagine that Lovecraft-the-Roman never once sought out this fine bronze statue of ‘Cesare Augusto’ on the Brown University campus.

The statue stood in front of Rhode Island Hall, an exact replica of an ancient statue of Caesar Augustus in Rome. It was installed at Brown in 1906, a gift from M. B. I. Goddard, and by the 1920s and 30s the statue’s surface and pedestal would likely have become somewhat softened in tone by natural weathering.

Standing before it, many aspects of the man would have flashed in Lovecraft’s mind. Not the least of which would be that here was monument to a fellow writer…

… it would pay to study other languages … Even Latin literature can be known pretty well through good English renderings of Caesar, Cicero, [etc, though] not all of them [to be read] complete, of course, but in balanced rations as recommended.

Encyclopedia Brunoniana reveals that after 1915 the Hall housed the Philosophy Department on the first floor and the Geology Department on the ground floor and in the basement. One then wonders if a visit to Providence by the geologist Morton might once have enabled Lovecraft to go inside the building with him, and be given a tour of the Geology dept.? Thus also admiring the statue on the way in and out. The statue stood there until 1952.

Predictably, toxic leftists are now demanding it be removed from the campus.