This 1928 Opera Nazionale Balilla membership card was issued in the northern town of Monza, near Milan. The child is referred to as a Balilla. The organization of the Balilla and parallels with Scout groups are striking here as well. Just as Scout groups are organised in a semi-regimental style, the Balilla were also organised according to "Legions", as can be seen in the card below, which shows that the child belonged to the 162nd Legion, the Legionissima. Legions were organizational units in Roman armies. The regime was keen on justifying and elaborating a supposed historical continuum between the era of Imperial Rome and Mussolini's Rome. The two intervening millennia were wiped out of the ideological equation. Mussolini's "legionnaires" were represented as encapsulating the values of ancient Rome within the new, imperial fascist state.