Meo iussu et auspicio… Aethiopiam… perventum est (Aug. RG 26, 5). Scenari politico-economici, echi propagandistici e suggestioni espansionistiche della spedizione di Publio Petronio

Abstract

Within the constant research of symmetries between the policies of Augustus and Mussolini, although many were the merits of Augustus (the conquest of Ethiopia marked the culmination of the myth of Romanity and the highest level of consensus towards the regime), the military expedition against the ancient Ethiopia (Res Gestae 26), carried out on behalf of Augustus by the prefect of Egypt Publius Petronius : the background of this campaign was a series of events that took place in the decade 30 to 20 B.C. and that can be reconstructed through sources such as Strabo, Pliny the Elder and Cassius Dio, as well as epigraphic evidence. In this specific instance, to find out the real reason of Petronius’ campaign we have to look at Meroitic Ethiopia as a transit zone on the way of the caravan routes of the Sudan desert : hence the importance of cities such as Napata and Meroe, links between the eastern desert and the Red Sea. The stakes of these clashes were indeed the trade routes, the caravan cities and the harbours of the Red Sea, as shrewdly pointed out just in the years of Mussolini’s regime, that aimed at Ethiopia also owing to its outlets to the sea, seen as prospective hubs of new trade routes towards the Red Sea.