{"id":31740,"date":"2025-09-16T15:23:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T14:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/?p=31740"},"modified":"2025-10-01T09:02:43","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T08:02:43","slug":"the-afterlives-of-the-eternal-city-ancient-rome-and-modern-italian-imperialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/2025\/09\/16\/the-afterlives-of-the-eternal-city-ancient-rome-and-modern-italian-imperialism\/","title":{"rendered":"The afterlives of the Eternal City \u2013 ancient Rome and modern Italian imperialism"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”31741″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Winner of the Research Output Prize 2025 \u2013 Heritage & Creativity<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Samuel Agbamu, Lecturer in Classics, explains how modern Italy sought to legitimise its colonial ambitions in Africa by evoking the ancient Roman Empire.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

When you think of the Roman Empire, what do you imagine? The massive silhouette of the Colosseum looming over the city of Rome, perhaps, or the straight roads that connected the ancient capital with the distant corners of its provinces? The well-drilled legionaries of its armies, marching down said roads to quell pesky natives \u2013 whether in far-off Britain or scorching-hot Palestine \u2013 rising up to gain their independence? Or maybe the traces of Roman culture left behind through the Latin language, underfloor heating or sparkling mosaics come to mind?<\/p>\n

Whatever the Roman Empire means to you, the signs that ancient Rome has left behind an indelible legacy remain startlingly clear in contemporary politics and culture. To give a recent example, Elon Musk attracted controversy in early 2025 when he performed a gesture<\/a>, which many interpreted as a fascist salute, but which his followers claimed as a \u201cRoman salute\u201d. Those who defended the gesture pointed to Musk\u2019s claim that he thinks about the Roman Empire every day, as a way to distance his salute from fascism.<\/p>\n

Yet throughout fascism\u2019s history, it has been closely interlinked with ancient Rome. Elon Musk was not the first person to base his political visions on the empire of antiquity. In fact, since the collapse of the Roman Empire, countless leaders, states and empires have looked to it for inspiration. Perhaps no leader from history so aggressively cultivated associations between himself and ancient Rome as the Fascist dictator of Italy, Benito Mussolini. Mussolini, who came to power in 1922 and was killed in 1945, even went so far as to declare that he had re-established the Empire of ancient Rome.<\/p>\n

In my 2024 book, Restorations of Empire in Africa<\/em><\/a>, \u00a0I trace the ways that the history of the Roman empire in Africa was used by modern Italy\u2019s empire in Africa. This is a story that begins before Mussolini\u2019s rise to power and ends long after his eventual fall, but which nonetheless reaches its most dramatic chapter under the Fascist regime.<\/p>\n

The return of Rome<\/h2>\n

Italy is a relatively new country. It was only in 1861 that it became unified, and Rome itself was only absorbed into the new nation in 1871. Yet almost as soon as it became a unified nation-state, it embarked upon a project to become an empire. At the time of Italian unification, other European countries were carving out empires for themselves in Africa, a period of history known as \u201cthe Scramble for Africa\u201d. If Italy wanted an empire for itself, therefore, it would be in Africa. Because ancient Rome had conquered vast swathes of North Africa, and because Rome was now in Italy, Italian imperialists claimed that North Africa was rightfully Italian since it had once been Roman.<\/p>\n

On the fiftieth anniversary of Italian unification, Italy invaded the parts of North Africa which are today Libya. This invasion was startlingly modern, featuring the first bombing of a city by aeroplane. It was also a strikingly atavistic military campaign. As Italian colonial troops swept through the Libyan landscape, they were closely followed by archaeologists who excavated Roman remains as a way to prove the legitimacy of the Italian invasion. Italian propaganda from the time emphasised the links between ancient Roman and modern Italian imperialism. Part of this involved reviving ancient Rome\u2019s characterisation of the Mediterranean as \u201cour sea\u201d \u2013 mare nostrum <\/em>in Latin.<\/p>\n

When Mussolini\u2019s Fascist Party came to power, these links were even more aggressively promoted. In 1935, Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia, committing war crimes on a genocidal scale which would, a few years later, be echoed in Europe. When the invasion was completed in 1936, Mussolini delivered a speech in which he declared that the empire of ancient Rome had been re-established \u2013 never mind the fact that Ethiopia had never been conquered by the Roman Empire. Tellingly, Mussolini\u2019s speech was translated into Latin and disseminated widely.<\/p>\n

The defeat of Fascist Italy during the Second World War and the formal loss of Italy\u2019s African colonies following the 1947 Treaty of Paris did not end connections being made between the modern country and the ancient Roman Empire.<\/p>\n

Migration in mare nostrum<\/em><\/h2>\n

In the wake of Western military interventions in the Middle East and North Africa during the so-called \u201cwar on terror\u201d, the Mediterranean became one of the most dangerous routes for refugees seeking to flee war zones and enter Europe. One of the busiest routes was from Libya to the Italian islands of the central Mediterranean. In 2008, the then-Prime Minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, made a deal<\/a> with the dictator of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi. In exchange for preventing people from migrating northwards across the Mediterranean, Libya received the Venus of Cyrene, a Roman statue stolen from Libya by colonial troops during the 1911 invasion.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”31743″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]In 2011, on the centenary of the Italian invasion of Libya, NATO jets bombarded the North African country in an effort to topple Gaddafi. The conflict saw an upsurge in refugees attempting to cross the Mediterranean. Migration from Libya to Europe became an urgent issue after two ships, carrying hundreds of refugees, sank off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa in October 2013. At least 360 people died.<\/p>\n

In response, the Italian government launched an operation to police the Mediterranean. They called this \u201cOperation Mare Nostrum<\/a>\u201d, recalling not only ancient Rome\u2019s claims to the Mediterranean but also modern Italian imperialism\u2019s evocation of the Roman Empire. But now, mare nostrum <\/em>was not about facilitating movement in and around the Mediterranean, but preventing it.<\/p>\n

The transformation of mare nostrum<\/em> from a tool of expansion to one of exclusion reflects a broader shift in attitudes towards \u2013 and debates about \u2013 migration. In the UK, the last two summers have seen explosive demonstrations of anti-migrant sentiment which have left me, the descendant of immigrants from Asia and Africa, feeling deeply unsettled. Restorations of Empire in Africa<\/em><\/a> is a small contribution to the contextualisation of these current debates, not only in relation to histories of modern empires which continue to shape migration patterns, but also the ancient empires that have defined the imaginations of more recent imperialisms.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/9780191943805.001.0001<\/a><\/em>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”31741″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Winner of the Research Output Prize 2025 \u2013 Heritage & Creativity Samuel Agbamu, Lecturer in Classics, explains how modern Italy sought to legitimise its colonial ambitions…Read More ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1000,"featured_media":31741,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"__cvm_playback_settings":[],"__cvm_video_id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[186,357,2277,777],"class_list":["post-31740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-heritage-creativity","tag-classics","tag-fascism","tag-feature","tag-roman-empire"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe afterlives of the Eternal City \u2013 ancient Rome and modern Italian imperialism - Connecting Research<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/2025\/09\/16\/the-afterlives-of-the-eternal-city-ancient-rome-and-modern-italian-imperialism\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The afterlives of the Eternal City \u2013 ancient Rome and modern Italian imperialism - Connecting Research\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”31741″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Winner of the Research Output Prize 2025 \u2013 Heritage & Creativity Samuel Agbamu, Lecturer in Classics, explains how modern Italy sought to legitimise its colonial ambitions...Read More >\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/2025\/09\/16\/the-afterlives-of-the-eternal-city-ancient-rome-and-modern-italian-imperialism\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Connecting Research\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/theuniversityofreading\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-09-16T14:23:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-10-01T08:02:43+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/72\/2025\/09\/Mussolini-Roman-restoration.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1367\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"699\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Joseph Hester\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@UniRdg_Research\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@UniRdg_Research\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Joseph Hester\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/2025\/09\/16\/the-afterlives-of-the-eternal-city-ancient-rome-and-modern-italian-imperialism\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/2025\/09\/16\/the-afterlives-of-the-eternal-city-ancient-rome-and-modern-italian-imperialism\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Joseph Hester\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/#\/schema\/person\/4b3c11ac4fe9ea3a6a127c11fd61bc6b\"},\"headline\":\"The afterlives of the Eternal City \u2013 ancient Rome and modern Italian imperialism\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-09-16T14:23:14+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-10-01T08:02:43+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/2025\/09\/16\/the-afterlives-of-the-eternal-city-ancient-rome-and-modern-italian-imperialism\/\"},\"wordCount\":1124,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"Classics\",\"fascism\",\"feature\",\"roman empire\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Heritage & Creativity\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/2025\/09\/16\/the-afterlives-of-the-eternal-city-ancient-rome-and-modern-italian-imperialism\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/2025\/09\/16\/the-afterlives-of-the-eternal-city-ancient-rome-and-modern-italian-imperialism\/\",\"name\":\"The afterlives of the Eternal City \u2013 ancient Rome and modern Italian imperialism - 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