The Arco dei Fileni: A fascist reading of Sallust’s Bellum Iugurthinum

In March 1937, Mussolini, visiting Italy's Libyan colony, inaugurated the monumental Arco dei Fileni. Its name referred to a territorializing legend of Carthaginian brothers who sacrificed themselves to establish a boundary between Carthage and Cyrene, most fully narrated in Sallust's Bellum Iugurthinum. By explicitly taking inspiration from Sallust's text, the arch stood as a concrete expression of Fascist romanità. However, in turning Sallust's digression into a triumphal monument, the architect and Italian colonial authorities elided many of the ambivalences of Sallust's narrative which have been identified in recent scholarship. This article considers the arch's appropriation of Sallust's narrative within the wider context of Fascist romanità, arguing that its elisions and distortions betrayed the colonial anxieties of Italian Fascism in Libya.