Editing Fasces (section)

==== 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}}