Editing Fasces (section)

== In the ancient world ==
[[File:2Postumia Denarius. A.POST A.F S.N ALBIN Hispania HISPAN, Togate figure fasces legionary eagle.jpg|thumbnail|Aquila (Legionary eagle), toga figure, and fasces on reverse side of coinage]]
[[File:Ascia bipenne da alto dignitario, da tomba del littore a vetulonia, 610 ac ca.jpg|thumb|Earliest depiction of a fasces, c. 610 BC, discovered as a grave good in Vetulonia in 1897]]

=== Origin ===
The English word ''fasces'' comes from [[Latin]], with singular {{lang|la|fascis}}.<ref>{{cite web |title=fasces |url=http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=fasces |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930201552/http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=fasces |archive-date=2007-09-30 |website=Merriam-Webster Dictionary }}</ref> The word is usually used in its plural to refer to magisterial insignia, but is sometimes used to refer to [[bushel]]s or bundles in an agricultural context. This word itself comes from the [[Proto-Indo-European language|Indo-European]] root {{PIE|*bhasko-}}, referring to a bundle.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|pp=12–13}}

The earliest archaeological remains of a fasces are those discovered in a necropolis near the Etruscan hamlet now called [[Vetulonia]] by the archaeologist [[Isidoro Falchi]] in 1897.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=8}} The discovery is now dated to the relatively narrow range of 630–625&nbsp;BC, which coincides with the traditional dating of Rome's legendary fifth king [[Lucius Tarquinius Priscus]].{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=10}} An [[Etruscan civilization|Etruscan]] origin, furthermore, is supported by ancient literary evidence: the poet [[Silius Italicus]], who flourished in the late 1st century AD, posited that Rome adopted many of its emblems of office – viz the fasces, the [[curule chair]], and the {{lang|la|[[toga praetexta]]}} – specifically from Vetulonia.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|pp=9–10}} A story of Etruscan origin is further supported by [[Dionysius of Halicarnassus]] in his [[antiquarian]] work, ''[[Roman Antiquities]]''.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=11}}

=== Rome ===

==== Regal period ====
Ancient Roman literary sources are unanimous in describing the ancient [[Roman Kingdom|kings of Rome]] as being accompanied by twelve lictors carrying fasces. Dionysius, in ''Roman Antiquities'', gave a complex story explaining this number: for him, the practice originated in [[Etruria]] and each bundle symbolised one of the twelve Etruscan [[city-state]]s; the twelve states together represented a joint military campaign and were given to the Etruscan king of Rome, Tarquinius Priscus, on his accession to the throne.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=11}} While [[Livy]] concurred with Dionysius' story, he also relates a different story ascribing fasces to the first Roman king – [[Romulus]] – who selected twelve to correspond to the twelve birds which appeared in [[augury]] at the [[founding of Rome]].{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=12}}

Later stories gave different aetiologies: some described fasces as coming from [[Latium]], others from Italy in general. [[Macrobius]], writing in the 5th century AD, have the Romans taking fasces from the Etruscans as spoils of war rather than adopted by cultural diffusion. In general, it seems that by the sixth century BC, fasces had become a common symbol in central Italy and Etruria – if not also into southern Italy, as Livy implies{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=14}} – for royal prestige and coercive power.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=12}} The ancient Roman literary record largely depicts the fasces of their time as carried largely symbolically by lictors who were present primarily to defend their charges from violence. However, the same stories depict fasces far more negatively in the context of tyrannies or regal displays.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|pp=14–15}}

Plutarch, in his [[Parallel Lives|''Life of Publicola'']], describes an incident in which [[Lucius Junius Brutus]], the first [[Roman consul]], has lictors scourge with rods and decapitate with axes – components of the fasces – his own sons who were conspiring to restore the Tarquins to the throne.<ref>{{harvnb|Brennan|2022|p=16}}, citing Plut. ''Pub.'' 6.</ref> After Brutus' alleged death in battle, Publicola then passed reforms subordinating magisterial use of fasces for coercion to the people: consuls would lower the fasces before the people during speeches and there would be appeal to the people against a magistrate ordering capital or corporal punishment.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=18}}

==== Republican period ====
[[File:Q. Servilius Caepio (M. Junius) Brutus, denarius, 54 BC, RRC 433-1.jpg|thumb|right|Denarius minted by [[Marcus Junius Brutus]] depicting a personification of [[Libertas]] on left and Lucius Junius Brutus with [[lictor]]s carrying bladed fasces on right{{sfn|Crawford|1974|p=455}}{{Sfn|Tempest|2017|loc=Plate 4}} ]]
[[File:S Paolo FLM - nel chiostro fasci pretore 1120843.JPG|thumb|Rome, cloister of San Paolo, outside wall: marble panel depicting six fasces]]

During the republic, the Romans used the number of fasces accompanying a magistrate to mark out rank and distinction. The two consuls each had 12 lictors, as did the traditional [[Roman dictator|dictators]].{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=50}} The late republican dictators – of which [[Sulla]] was the first – were accompanied by 24 lictors and fasces.<ref>{{harvnb|Brennan|2022|pp=20–21}}, adding that [[Julius Caesar]] during his dictatorship, was voted 72 fasces for his triumphs, but also noting that this backfired politically.</ref> However, the consuls alternated initiative by month. The consul without initiative would retain a negative on the other consul's actions but would be preceded only by an {{lang|la|accensus}} and be followed by lictors bearing reduced fasces.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=50}}

Praetors normally held six fasces and were so described on campaign in Greek sources. There were, however, some exceptions. After 197&nbsp;BC, praetors sent to [[Hispania]] were dispatched with [[proconsul]]ar status and therefore received twelve fasces. Around the same time, in the {{lang|la|[[lex Plaetoria]]}}, the number of fasces accompanying a praetor in court was reduced to merely two, possibly because a praetor in court "with six fasces might seem imperious".{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=54}}

By the late second century BC, magistrates who had won victories abroad that were proclaimed {{lang|la|[[imperator]]}} – a victory title – were decorated with [[Laurus nobilis|laurel]]. This acclamation was a necessary prerequisite for celebrating a [[Roman triumph|triumph]], a prestigious award for which commanders might wait years.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=30}} Within the {{lang|la|[[pomerium]]}}, Rome's sacred city boundary, the magistrates normally removed the axes from their fasces to symbolise the appealable nature of their civic powers.{{sfn|Drummond|2015}} However, an exception was made during a triumph, when the triumphing general's military auspices were extended into the city so that he could make sacrifices at the [[Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus|Temple of Jupiter]] on the [[Capitoline Hill]]. The laurels decorating the triumphator's axed fasces were removed and decided in a ceremony, placing them in the lap of the cult statue of the Capitoline Jupiter.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=31}}

During the republic, only persons possessing {{lang|la|imperium}} were granted full complements of fasces; the number granted to promagistrates for their analogous rank was not diminished.{{sfn|Drummond|2015}} Lieutenants exercising delegated {{lang|la|imperium}} were, in the late republic, regularly granted two fasces.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=94}} When others were sometimes assigned lictors as bodyguards or otherwise to assist in official duties, they probably did not carry fasces.<ref>{{harvc |last=Staveley |first=Eastland Stuart |last2=Lintott |first2=Andrew |c=lictores |in=OCD<sup>4</sup> |year=2012 }}</ref> Italian municipal officials during the republic were usually accompanied by local lictors, but these lictors did not carry fasces until imperial times.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=25}}

Popular resistance to magistrates during the late republic sometimes took the form of mobs smashing magisterial fasces. In 133&nbsp;BC, [[Tiberius Gracchus]] incited a mob to take and break a praetor's fasces; two praetors, a certain Brutus and Servilius, were dispatched in 88&nbsp;BC to order [[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]], then consul, to desist from his march on Rome and had their insignia of office defaced and destroyed; [[Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus]]'s lictors were set upon in 59&nbsp;BC when he – along with some [[plebeian]] tribunes – attempted to veto [[Julius Caesar]]'s [[Lex Julia agraria|land reform bill]] during their joint consulship, leading to his lictors' fasces being lost entirely.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|pp=78–79}} This last breaking of fasces was "a ritualistic act of symbolic violence (the People thus disposing of tokens of the imperium that was in their gift) that substituted for direct physical violence against the person of the consul".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Morstein-Marx |first=Robert  |title=Julius Caesar and the Roman people |date=2021 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |doi=10.1017/9781108943260 |isbn=978-1-108-94326-0 |page=138 |s2cid=242729962 |quote=There are only a few acts of breaking fasces recorded, and all of them carry the message that the people refused to acknowledge the consular authority any longer. }}</ref>

==== Imperial period ====
[[File:Caracalla, sestercius, AD 202-204, RIC IV 422A.jpg|thumb|[[Sestertius]] of [[Caracalla]], 202–204. The reverse depicts the emperors Caracalla and [[Septimius Severus|Septimius]] on a platform (central characters); on the right is a lictor holding the new curved fascis.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Mattingly |first1=Harold |last2=Sydenham |first2=Edward A |title=Roman Imperial Coinage: Pertinax to Geta |volume=4 pt 1 |location=London |publisher=Spink & Son |year=1936 |page=281 }}</ref>]]
During the [[Roman Empire]], the number of people who were entitled to fasces and lictors expanded. Fasces were first granted to [[Vestal Virgin]]s by the Senate in 42&nbsp;BC when the six vestals were allowed one lictor each.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=95}} They were joined by fasces granted to the three major {{lang|la|[[Flamen|flamines]]}} (high priests). Single lictors also preceded members of the {{lang|la|[[sodales Augustales]]}}, who were priests of the [[Roman imperial cult|imperial cult]].{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=96}} At the death of the first emperor, [[Augustus]], in AD 14, his widow [[Livia]] was voted a lictor by the Senate, though sources disagree as to whether she ever exercised the privilege.<ref>{{harvnb|Brennan|2022|p=97}}, explaining that while [[Cassius Dio]] reports Livia was voted a lictor, [[Tacitus]] says [[Tiberius]] flatly refused to allow her use of one.</ref>

The division of the Roman provinces into [[imperial province|imperial]] and [[senatorial province]]s, with Augustus holding proconsular imperium over the imperial provinces and administering them through legates, also further expanded the number of fasces.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=97}} Augustus appointed legates with {{lang|la|imperium [[propraetor|pro praetore]]}} as governors, each of which was granted five lictors. When Italy was divided into [[Augustan regions of Italy|fourteen regions]] in 7&nbsp;BC, the {{lang|la|curator}} of each region was granted two lictors while in office and on station. After the creation of the {{lang|la|[[aerarium militare]]}} (military treasury) in AD&nbsp;6, the three ex-praetors administering it were each granted two lictors as well.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=98}} Municipal magistrates' lictors also gained fasces during the imperial period.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=25}}

By the reign of the [[Severan dynasty|Severans]] at the start of the third century, fasces had been redesigned. Depicted on a sestertius struck {{circa|AD&nbsp;203}}, fasces no longer took the form of a bundle of sticks, but rather took the form of a long curved stick or two of such sticks bound together. The number of fasces granted to imperial governors titled proconsul stayed at twelve into the late fourth century AD; governors of the rank {{lang|la|[[consularis]]}} received five fasces, but most governors – with the rank {{lang|la|[[praeses]]}} – had no fasces at all.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=53}} This later form persisted through to the [[Eastern Roman Empire]]: the Byzantine antiquarian, [[John the Lydian]], writing in the sixth century AD described fasces as "long rods evenly bound together" with red straps and axes held aloft.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|pp=47, 229 n. 37|ps=, referencing coin RIC IVa 422A.}} Into the mediaeval period, Byzantine emperors remained guarded by men – by the 14th century, the [[Varangian Guard]] – carrying staves and axes.{{sfn|Brennan|2022|p=49}}