Quilici’s Italian texts for inscriptions 2 and 3 (from La strada litoranea della Libia, 145–46):

Sul punto mediano della strada della Sirtica / a chi giunga dal mare dal cielo dal lido / dell’Africa mediterranea / attesti quest’arco la maestà dell’impero / che dai colli fatali dell’urbe / regnando Vittorio Emanuele III / Benito Mussolini / capo del governo duce del fascismo / addusse / a nuovo magistero di civiltà nel mondo / incomparabile dono alle genti / restituite alla fortuna e alla gloria di Roma. / L’anno XV dell’era fascista, / primo dell’impero, / Italo Balbo governatore della Libia, / 1937

«Dove spiaggia deserta / sulle spoglie mortali non sulla memoria / vostra o Fileni / stese il silenzio dei millenni / Roma fascista / come l’antica più dell’antica / vendicatrice del destino / l’una all’altra congiungendo / le braccia della Sirtica / ad accogliere il flutto della vita novella / suoi segni pose».

The three inscriptions appeared on both sides of a monumental arch designed by Florestano di Fausto (1890–1965) and inaugurated in 1937 at a ceremony attended by Benito Mussolini (Fig. 1 and 2). While the first inscription (1) is an adapted quotation from Horace's Carmen Saeculare, the second and third inscriptions (2-3) are Giorgio Pasquali's Latin translations of Italian compositions by Nello Quilici.

The monument, inspired by the story of the Philaeni brothers, best known from Sallust’s Bellum Iugurthinum (79), was built at the halfway point of the Strada Litoranea, near the town of Ras Lanuf. This was a coastal road, constructed by the Italian colonial authorities and completed in the same year as the arch’s inauguration, that ran from the Libyan border with Egypt to the border with Tunisia. At the top of the arch, on the eastern side of the arch and therefore facing the rising sun, was an inscription in large letters, a quotation taken from Horace’s Carmen Saeculare (9–12): Alme Sol, possis nihil urbe Roma visere maius. This is an abridged adaptation from the third stanza of Horace’s poem, which was composed to celebrate the Ludi saeculares instituted by Augustus in 17 BCE. 1937, the year of the arch’s inauguration, also saw lavish celebrations of Augustus’ bimillenary, during which links were made between the first Roman emperor and Mussolini. The lines of the Carmen Saeculare from which the inscription is adapted read:

Alme Sol, curru nitido diem qui

promis et celas aliusque et idem              

nasceris, possis nihil urbe Roma

     visere maius.

Horace, Carm. Saec. 9–12

Life-giving Sun, who with your bright chariot bring forth the day and conceal it, and who are born different and yet the same, may you never admire anything greater than the city of Rome! (trans. Antonino Nastasi)

Horace’s Carmen Saeculare was widely appropriated during the Fascist period, especially in the period around the celebration of his bimillenary in 1935. The fact that this was also the year in which Italy launched its invasion of Abyssinia meant that the celebration of Horace and of empire neatly coincided. For more on these lines of Horace’s Carmen Saeculare under Fascism, see Strobl 2015; Grilli 1999; Fedeli 2020: 71-75.

Underneath the Horace inscription were two colossal bronze sculptures of the eponymous Philaeni brothers, crafted by Ulderico Conti (1884–1966). On the inside walls of the arch were two bas-reliefs showing the construction of the Litoranea and the ‘foundation of empire – an affirmation of the renovated pre-eminence of Rome in the civilised world’ (De Agostini 1938: 25).

The placement of the arch in the middle of the Via Syrtica running along the North African coast, conceptualised by Italian imperialists after Gabriele d’Annunzio as Italy’s ‘Fourth Shore’ (Quarta Sponda), is emphasised in the east side inscription 2. Here, Pasquali’s Latin text claims Italian ownership over the shores of Africa (a litoribus Africae nostrae / convenientibus) whereas Quilici’s Italian more neutrally refers to Africa mediterranea. Pasquali renders Quilici’s characterisation of Mussolini as capo del governo into the Latin moderator, a term by which Mussolini was referred to in other Fascist Latin inscriptions (for example in Rome’s Mercati di Traiano). Mussolini had proclaimed the foundation of an Italian empire in 1936. Thus, the arch’s eastern inscription claims that the new imperial culture of Fascist Italy had been brought from the seven hills of Rome to Italy’s Libyan colonies (former provinces of the ancient Roman Empire). This new culture is embodied by the arch, which monumentalises the legendary Philaeni brothers, whose story is most fully narrated by the Roman historian Sallust.

In Sallust’s account of the Jugurthine War (112–105 BCE), the historian digresses from his narrative to tell the story of the two Philaeni brothers. The digression occurs when the events of the war against Jugurtha arrive at the region associated with the Carthaginian pair. According to the story related by Sallust, during a war between Carthage and Cyrene, when both sides had been worn down by the conflict, a solution was proposed to end the fighting. Both Carthage and Cyrene would send out teams of runners towards each other, from their respective cities. Where the runners met, there the frontier between the two cities’ territories would be established. The Philaeni brothers, the team from Carthage, set out at the appointed time but, because they ran further than the team from Cyrene, were accused of cheating. Therefore, Cyrene offered the brothers a choice: either they should agree to be buried alive on the spot that they claimed to reach and thus extend Carthaginian territory to that point, or the team from Cyrene could have the same option but take any point of their choosing. Out of a profound patriotism and selflessness, the Philaeni brothers agreed to these terms and were buried alive at the site Di Fausto’s arch was supposed to mark. This story of territorial expansion and patriotic sacrifice was rich material for a Fascist imperial monument, even if the brothers were Carthaginian. Furthermore, this inscription faced Carthage (currently Tunis), homeland of the brothers.

Although this story is only very briefly alluded to in the arch’s inscription, there are clear convergences between both Pasquali’s Latin, Quilici’s Italian, and Sallust’s original text. For example, Sallust’s introduction to the area in which the arae Philaenorum were found emphasises the barrenness of the sandy landscape (ager in medio harenosus, una specie; neque flumen neque mons erat, qui finis eorum discerneret – in between [Carthage and Cyrene] was a sandy landscape of uniform appearance; there was no river or mountain by which to discern their border. Sall. Iug. 79). Similarly, both Pasquali (harenae nudae gignentium) and Quilici (spiaggia deserta), make explicit the desolation of the region. Likewise, Sallust (seque vitamque suam rei publicae condonavere – they sacrificed themselves gave their lives for the republic, Sall. Iug. 79) and Pasquali refer to the self-sacrifice of the Philaeni in similar terms (qui vosque vitamque rei publicae condonastis – you who sacrificed yourselves and gave your lives to the republic). Such a formulation is absent in Quilici’s Italian, making it clear that Pasquali was deviating from his Italian source in order for his Latin to be closer to Sallust’s text.

During the Second World War, the Strada litoranea was an important vector of transportation for both Allied and Axis forces in the North African theatre of war. Before the arch was destroyed under Gaddafi in the 1970s, Horace text was replaced by an Arabic text, and Kenrick (2009: 155) suggests that it was replaced with Quranic verses. The remains of the arch, including the bronze figures, but not, it seems, Pasquali’s inscription, were removed to the outdoor space of a small museum in Ras Al-Aali. During the Libyan Civil War in 2011, the area of Ras Lanuf was the site of fierce fighting between regime and rebel forces. As of October 2017, according to a statement from the Director of the Sirte Antiquities Office, Abdul-Azim Hafez, the statues are acknowledged by UNESCO and the Libyan Antiquities Office to be safe.

Pasquali’s Latin text of the arch, with an Italian translation, was published in La strada litoranea della Libia (1937) and has since appeared in Munzi (2001), Lamers and Reitz-Joosse (2016) with an English translation of the western side, Brillante (2019), and Agbamu (2019), also with an English translation.

Bibliography

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Brillante, Sergio. 2019. ‘«La Civiltà è giunta in Etiopia» Giorgio Pasquali e il colonialismo italiano’. Quaderni di Storia 90 (45): 65–81.

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La strada litoranea della Libia. 1937. Verona: Mondadori.

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Samuel Agbamu