Fasces
From Freepedia
Fasces (the plural, almost a plurale tantum, of the Latin word fascis, 'bundle') symbolise summary power and jurisdiction.
The traditional Roman fasces consisted of a bundle of birch rods tied together with a red ribbon as a cylinder around an axe.
The coined term fascism has its origins in this Latin word. Although victorious powers in World War II largely suppressed the Nazi symbol, the swastika, the fasces as used in fascist Italy remains.
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Antiquity
Image:Fasces2.jpg The fasces lictoriae ("bundles of the lictors") (in Italian, fascio littorio) symbolised power and authority (imperium) in ancient Rome. A corps of apparitores (subordinate officials) called lictors each carried fasces as a sort of staff of office before a magistrate, in a number corresponding to his rank, in public ceremonies and inspections, and bearers of fasces preceded praetors, propraetors, consuls, proconsuls, Masters of the Horse, dictators, and caesars. During triumphs (public celebrations held in Rome after a military conquest) heroic soldiers (they had to have suffered injury in battle) carried fasces in procession.
Roman historians recalled that twelve lictors had ceremoniously accompanied the Etruscan kings of Rome in the distant past, and sought to account for the number and to provide etymologies for the name lictor.
The symbolism of the fasces at one level suggested strength through unity. The rods symbolized the state's power to punish delinquents. The axe represented the ultimate power of high justice to execute (decapitate), and has a long history in the eastern Mediterranean: see labrys, the Anatolian and Minoan double-headed axe.
Traditionally, fasces carried within the Pomerium - the limits of the sacred inner City of Rome - had their axe blades removed. Lictors attending to dictators, however, kept the axe blades even inside.
Various modern authorities
The following cases all involve the adoption of the fasces as a symbol or icon; no actual physical re-introduction as a (highly symbolic) implement.
- Napoleon the French Revolution; this emblem remains on the front cover of French passports and French coat of arms
- The Spanish paramilitary police Guardia Civil
- In the 1920s, Italian Fascism, eager to portray itself as a revival of the glorious Roman imperial past, adopted the fasces for its symbol, as an emblem of the increased strength of the individual fascis when bound into the entire bundle
- Used as part of the Knights of Columbus emblem (designed in 1883)
- At the Lincoln Memorial, Lincoln's seat bears the fasces on the fronts of its arms.
- The fasces appears on the state seal of Colorado, USA, beneath the All-seeing eye and above the mountains and mines.
- Two fasces appear on either side of the Flag of the United States in the United States House of Representatives, representing the power of the lower house and the country.
- The reverse of the United States "Mercury" dime bears the design of a fasces and an olive branch.
- On the seal of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, a figure carries a fasces; the seal appears on the borough flag.
Related Topics
- fascio (usage 1890s to World War I)
- ferula
- Labrys
- staff of office
- fascine
- francisca
