The Arco dei Fileni: The Realization of Romanità in Africa

Abstract

Abstract This chapter focuses on a triumphal arch erected by Italian colonial authorities on the Strada Litoranea, in Libya in 1937. This road was continually represented as a Roman achievement in publications and media from the time, and was inaugurated during Mussolini’s spectacularized tour of Libya in 1937. The arch that marked the road’s midway point, designed by the architect Florestano Di Fausto, explicitly framed itself as a concrete manifestation of the legend of the Carthaginian Philaeni brothers, narrated most fully in a digression in Sallust’s Bellum Iugurthinum. This chapter suggests that if Roman integrity started to collapse with the destruction of Carthage, justifying Scipio Aemilianus’ tears over the ruins of the Punic city, Fascist imperialism was constantly foreshadowing its own downfall, by constantly excavating the absent presence of the city of Carthage.