The First Fruits of Empire: Aeneid XI and the Monumentalizing of Modern Italian Imperialism (20 min)

Presenters

Samuel Agbamu, University of Reading

Abstract

This paper takes a cultural-materialist approach to consider the evocations of Roman history and epic poetry in the physical monuments to modern Italy’s colonial endeavors in East Africa. It focuses on two key monuments: an obelisk brought to Rome from Heliopolis by the emperor Domitian and excavated at the site of the Iseum in 1883, erected as a monument to Italy’s defeat at the hands of Ethiopian troops at the Battle of Dogali in 1887; and an 1887 Italian inscription on Rome’s Campidoglio. These monuments would become potent sites for the negotiation of Italy’s colonial history through the twenty years of fascist rule and into the postcolonial period.

Furthermore, the paper shows, through these monuments, how Italy’s colonial endeavors in East Africa served as a myth of origins for the Italian nation-state, rooted in readings of Virgil’s Aeneid. The paper traces a narrative that runs from the death of Pallas in book 10 of the Aeneid and Aeneas’s monumentalizing of his defeat of Mezentius in book Eleven 11 as the first fruits of victory, through early republican Rome’s conflicts with the Etruscans, to modern Italy’s colonial endeavors in East Africa, culminating with fascist Italy’s conquest, posed as vengeance for Italy’s earlier defeats in Ethiopia, especially Dogali (1887) and Adwa (1896). This is a story of vengeance and countervengeance, which crystalizes around the Dogali Obelisk, a site of a dramatic act of East African revenge against fascist Italy in 1938.

By tracing this story through liberal Italian imperialism and into the fascist period, this paper challenges narratives of fascist classicism as an innovative phenomenon and questions the enduring legacy of these monuments within the cityscape of Rome and the national imaginary of Italy today.

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