Fasces

From Free net encyclopedia

Image:Fasces.png Fasces (the plural, almost a plurale tantum, of the Latin word fascis, meaning 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 fasces have been used as a symbol of power by numerous governments and other authorities since the end of the Roman Empire. Perhaps their most visible use was by 20th century Italian fascism, which derives its name from the fasces. However, unlike for example the swastika, the fasces have avoided the stigma associated with being a fascist symbol, and continue to be used to this day much the same as before.

1 Antiquity
2 Various modern authorities
3 See also
4 External links

[edit]

Antiquity

Image:Cincinnatus statue.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 — those who had 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. This signified that under normal political circumstances, the imperium-bearing magistrates did not have the judicial power of life and death. That power rested, within the city, with the people through the assemblies. Lictors attending to dictators, however, kept the axe blades even inside the Pomerium — a sign that a dictator had the ultimate power in his own hands. But in 48 BC, guards holding bladed fasces guided Isauricus to the tribunal of Marcus Caelius, and Isauricus used one to destroy Caelius's magisterial chair (sedia curulis).

[edit]

Various modern authorities

Image:Kanton St.Gallen.png 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 and 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 of state 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.

Image:Kofc.gif

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.
A frieze on the facade of the Supreme Court building depicts the figure of a Roman Centurion holding a fasces, to represent "order." [1] Further, the official seal of the Senate has as one component a pair of crossed fasces.
The reverse of the United States "Mercury" dime (minted from 1916 to 1945) 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.
Both the Norwegian and the Swedish police use double fasces in their logos.