Editing Fasces (section)

== Symbolism ==
[[File:Roman armour and accessories.png|thumb|A print depicting Roman armour and accessories including two versions of the fasces (seen in the lower right)]]
The fasces, as a bundle of rods with an axe, was a grouping of all the equipment needed to inflict corporal or capital punishment. In [[ancient Rome]], the bundle was a material symbol of a [[Roman magistrate]]'s full civil and military power, known as {{lang|la|[[imperium]]}}. They were carried in a procession with a magistrate by [[lictor]]s, who carried the fasces and at times used the birch rods as punishment to enforce obedience with magisterial commands.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|pp=2, 12}} In common language and literature, the fasces were regularly associated with certain offices: [[praetors]] were referred to in Greek as the {{Transliteration|grc|hexapelekys}} ({{literally|six axes}}) and the [[Roman consul|consuls]] were referred to as "the twelve fasces" as literary [[metonymy]].{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=1}} Beyond serving as insignia of office, it also symbolised the [[Roman Republic]] and its prestige.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=2}}

After the classical period, with the [[Fall of the Roman Empire|fall of the Roman state]], thinkers were removed from the "psychological terror generated by the original Roman fasces" in the antique period. By the [[Renaissance]], there emerged a conflation of the fasces with a Greek [[fable]] first recorded by [[Babrius]] in the second century AD depicting how individual sticks can be easily broken but how a bundle could not be.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=3}} This story is common across Eurasian culture and by the thirteenth century AD was recorded in the ''[[Secret History of the Mongols]]''.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=4}} While there is no historical connection between the original fasces and this fable,<ref>{{harvnb|Brennan|2022|p=4|ps=. "It must be stressed that, in historical terms, there is no close connection between the Roman fasces and the Aesop fable... other than the attractive coincidence that each involves a bundle of sticks".}}</ref> by the sixteenth century AD, fasces were "inextricably linked" with interpretations of the fable as one expressing unity and harmony.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=4}}