Afasces (/ˈfæsiːz/FASS-eez;Latin:[ˈfaskeːs]; aplurale tantum, from theLatin wordfascis, meaning 'bundle';Italian:fascio littorio) is a bound bundle of wooden rods, often, but not always, including an axe (occasionally two axes) with its blade emerging. The fasces is an Italian symbol that had its origin in theEtruscan civilization and was passed on toancient Rome, where it symbolized aRoman king's power to punish his subjects,[1] and later, amagistrate'spower andjurisdiction. The axe has its own separate and older origin. Initially associated with thelabrys (Ancient Greek:λάβρυς,romanized: lábrys; Latin:bipennis),[a] the double-bitted axe originally fromCrete, is one of the oldest symbols ofGreek civilization.
The image of fasces has survived in the modern world as a representation of magisterial power, law, and governance. The fasces frequently occurs as acharge inheraldry: it is present on the reverse of the U.S.Mercury dime coin and it was the origin of the name of theNational Fascist Party in Italy (from which the termfascism is derived).
During the first half of the twentieth century, both the fasces and theswastika (each symbol having its own unique ancient religious and mythological associations) became heavily identified with thefascist political movements ofBenito Mussolini andAdolf Hitler.[2][3][4][5][6] This is due to Mussolini's more active usage of the symbol and the campaigns of Hitler,Nazis, andanti-fascists alike to make various allusions and comparisons between the twodictators to associate Hitler with Mussolini and his symbolism.[2][3][4][5][6] During this period, the swastika became deeply stigmatized, but the fasces did not undergo a similar process outside of Italy.
The fasces remained in use in many societies afterWorld War II because it had already been adopted and incorporated into the iconography of numerous governments outside of Italy prior to Mussolini. Such iconographical use persists in governmental and various other contexts. In contrast, the swastika remains in common usage only in Asia, where it originated as an ancientSouth Asian symbol, and inNavajo iconography, where its religious significance is entirely unrelated to, and predates, early 20th-century European fascism.[7]
The fasces, as a bundle of rods with an axe, was a grouping of all the equipment needed to inflict corporal or capital punishment. Inancient Rome, the bundle was a material symbol of aRoman magistrate's full civil and military power, known asimperium. They were carried in a procession with a magistrate bylictors, who carried the fasces and, at times, used the birch rods as punishment to enforce obedience with magisterial commands.[8] In common language and literature, the fasces were regularly associated with certain offices:praetors were referred to in Greek as thehexapelekys (lit. 'six axes'), and theconsuls were referred to as "the twelve fasces" as literarymetonymy.[9] Beyond serving as insignia of office, it also symbolised theRoman Republic and its prestige.[10]
After the classical period, with thefall of the Roman state, thinkers were removed from the "psychological terror generated by the original Roman fasces" in the antique period. By theRenaissance, there emerged a conflation of the fasces with a Greekfable first recorded byBabrius in the second century AD, which depicted how individual sticks can be easily broken but how a bundle could not be.[11] This story is common across Eurasian culture and by the thirteenth century AD, was recorded in theSecret History of the Mongols.[12] While there is no historical connection between the original fasces and this fable,[13] by the sixteenth century AD, fasces were "inextricably linked" with interpretations of the fable as one expressing unity and harmony.[12]
The English wordfasces comes fromLatin, with singularfascis.[14] The word is usually used in its plural to refer to magisterial insignia, but is sometimes used to refer tobushels or bundles in an agricultural context. This word itself comes from theIndo-European root*bhasko-, referring to a bundle.[15]
The earliest archaeological remains of a fasces are those discovered in a necropolis near the Etruscanhamlet now calledVetulonia by the archaeologistIsidoro Falchi in 1897.[16] The discovery is now dated to the relatively narrow range of 630–625 BC, which coincides with the traditional dating of Rome's legendary fifth king,Lucius Tarquinius Priscus.[17] AnEtruscan origin, furthermore, is supported by ancient literary evidence: the poetSilius Italicus, who flourished in the late 1st century AD, posited that Rome adopted many of its emblems of office – viz the fasces, thecurule chair, and thetoga praetexta – specifically from Vetulonia.[18] A story of Etruscan origin is further supported byDionysius of Halicarnassus in hisantiquarian work,Roman Antiquities.[19]
Ancient Roman literary sources are unanimous in describing the ancientkings of Rome as being accompanied by twelve lictors carrying fasces. Dionysius, inRoman Antiquities, gave a complex story explaining this number: for him, the practice originated inEtruria, and each bundle symbolised one of the twelve Etruscancity-states; 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.[19] WhileLivy 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 inaugury at thefounding of Rome.[20]
Later stories gave differentaetiologies: some described fasces as coming fromLatium, others from Italy in general.Macrobius, writing in the 5th century AD, has 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[21] – for royal prestige and coercive power.[20] 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.[22]
Plutarch, in hisLife of Publicola, describes an incident in whichLucius Junius Brutus, the firstRoman 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.[23] 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.[24]
_Brutus%2c_denarius%2c_54_BC%2c_RRC_433-1.jpg)
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 traditionaldictators.[27] The late republican dictators (of whichSulla was the first) were accompanied by 24 lictors and fasces.[28] However, the consuls alternated initiative by month. The consul without initiative would retain a veto on the other consul's actions, but would be preceded only by anaccensus and be followed by lictors bearing reduced fasces.[27]
Praetors normally held six fasces and were so described on campaign in Greek sources. There were, however, some exceptions. After 197 BC, praetors sent toHispania were dispatched withproconsular status and therefore received twelve fasces. Around the same time, in thelex 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".[29]
By the late second century BC, magistrates who had won victories abroad that were proclaimedimperator, a victory title, were decorated withlaurel. This acclamation was a necessary prerequisite for celebrating atriumph, a prestigious award for which commanders might wait years.[30] Within thepomerium, Rome's sacred city boundary, the magistrates normally removed the axes from their fasces to symbolise the appealable nature of their civic powers.[31] 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 theTemple of Jupiter on theCapitoline 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.[32]
During the republic, only persons possessingimperium were granted full complements of fasces; the number granted to promagistrates for their analogous rank was not diminished.[31] Lieutenants exercising delegatedimperium were, in the late republic, regularly granted two fasces.[33] When others were sometimes assigned lictors as bodyguards or otherwise to assist in official duties, they probably did not carry fasces.[34] Italian municipal officials during the republic were usually accompanied by local lictors, but these lictors did not carry fasces until imperial times.[35]
Popular resistance to magistrates during the late republic sometimes took the form of mobs smashing magisterial fasces. In 133 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 BC to orderLucius 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 BC when he, along with someplebeian tribunes, attempted to vetoJulius Caesar'sland reform bill during their joint consulship, leading to his lictors' fasces being lost entirely.[36] 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".[37]
During theRoman Empire, the number of people who were entitled to fasces and lictors expanded. Fasces were first granted toVestal Virgins by the Senate in 42 BC, when the six vestals were allowed one lictor each.[39] They were joined by fasces granted to the three majorflamines (high priests). Single lictors also preceded members of thesodales Augustales, who were priests of theimperial cult.[40] 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.[41]
The division of the Roman provinces intoimperial andsenatorial provinces, with Augustus holding proconsular imperium over the imperial provinces and administering them throughlegates, also further expanded the number of fasces.[42] Augustus appointed legates withimperiumpro praetore as governors, each of which was granted five lictors. When Italy was divided intofourteen regions in 7 BC, thecurator of each region was granted two lictors while in office and on station. After the creation of theaerarium militare (military treasury) in AD 6, the three ex-praetors administering it were each granted two lictors as well.[43] Municipal magistrates' lictors also gained fasces during the imperial period.[35]
By the reign of theSeverans at the start of the third century, fasces had been redesigned. Depicted on a sestertius struckc. AD 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 rankconsularis received five fasces, but most governors (with the rankpraeses) had no fasces at all.[44] This later form persisted through to theEastern 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.[45] Into the mediaeval period, Byzantine emperors remained guarded by men – by the 14th century, theVarangian Guard – carrying staves and axes.[46]
.jpg)
While the Latin wordfasces did not fall out of use in the mediaeval period, its technical meaning was forgotten. By the end of the first millennium, it was glossed as "somehow connot[ing] 'supreme power' or 'official honours.'"[48] For example,c. 1439,Jean de Rovroy, when translatingFrontinus'Stratagems, was deceived by afalse cognate, and thoughtfasces referred to ribbons that Roman magistrates would wear on their heads; such misconceptions were apparently common, and dated back to the 11th century.[48] Visual representations of the bundle itself were rare – the 11th century ADJunius manuscript excepted – until theRenaissance.[49]
Renaissancehumanists, especially those who read more Latin, however, quickly became well-informed on fasces and their legal technicalities, including the customary removal of axes within the city, lowering before the people, and alternation by the consuls. By the first decade of the 16th century, references to fasces in a more Roman context started to appear.[50] At the same time, recognisable depictions started to reappear in Italy, such asRaphael's painting,Conversion of the Proconsul (c. 1515).[51]
By the mid-1500s, the fasces also began to symbolise other things which would have been "unimportant or even unknown to the Romans".[52]Pope Clement VIII's reassertion of Papal juridical authority after thesack of Rome in 1527 started iconographic developments that would associate fasces with personifications ofJustice.[53]
_(1602-1661).svg)
Syncretism of fasces with theAesop fable of a bundle of sticks being harder to break than each stick alone associated fasces also with domestic concord, in addition to personifications ofConcord as depicted in art.[55] This symbology also merged with that of justice, in that unbinding the rods and axes promoted reflection over just action.[56] In this context,Cardinal Mazarin placed fasces on his coat of arms, "the first individual in the modern era to do so".[54]
From here, depictions of fasces exploded. Art historian Antje Middeldorf-Kosegarten,[57] inReallexikon zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte (Eng. “Real Lexicon of German Art History”):
charts for the post-Ripa period [after 1603] a proliferation of the fasces as symbol across almost every conceivable visual medium, from architectural sculpture to decorative arts, in paintings of every type, on monuments that range from honorific arches to tombs, as well as in medallic art and engravings...[58]
By the mid-seventeenth century, fasces had become "well established throughout Europe as a catch-all symbol for stable and competent governance". It also expanded to symbolise competent corporate governance.[59] Yet, due to a massive expansion in meaning, the symbol seemed to have died by the 1760s, muddled as little more than a reference to the past.[60]
As an emblem, fasces made their way to the colonies inBritish North America.[62] There, during theAmerican Revolution, the fasces' symbology as referencing strength through unity was adopted as a symbol of the united colonial effort against British rule.[63]
Fasces similarly came to adopt a privileged symbology during theFrench Revolution. First referring to the 83departments of 1789, as a symbol of unity, it came to be associated withfraternité and a united French people.[64] Topped with aPhrygian cap, fasces were seen as a reference to the "imagined spirit of the early Roman republic [and] its assertion of ideals of liberty and justice against tyranny".[65] In France, however, use of fasces as a symbol declined starting with the establishment of theConsulate in 1799 through to the proclamation of theSecond Republic in 1848.[66]
Similar usage proliferated in the aftermath of the French Revolution.Haiti, in its revolution against France, coined with many depictions of fasces, as didMexico during its first republic,Ecuador,Chile, and theRoman Republic of 1798.[67]
Numerous governments and other authorities have used the image of the fasces as a symbol of power since the end of theRoman Empire. It also has been used to hearken back to the Roman Republic, particularly by those who see themselves as modern-day successors to that republic or its ideals.
The Ecuadorian coat of arms incorporated the fasces in 1830, although it had already been in use in thecoat of arms ofGran Colombia.
The Italian wordfascio (pl.:fasci), etymologically related tofasces, was used by various political organizations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the figurative meaning of "league" or "union".
Italian Fascism, which derives its name from the fasces, arguably used this symbolism the most in the twentieth century. TheBritish Union of Fascists also used it in the 1930s. The fasces, as a widespread and long-established symbol in the West, however, has avoided thestigma associated with much offascist symbolism (except in Italy, where exhibiting the fasces can lead to an indictment) and many authorities continue to display them, including the federal government of the United States.
_variant_2.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
A review of the images included inLes Grands Palais de France : Fontainebleau[69][70] reveals that French architects used the Roman fasces (faisceaux romains) as a decorative device as early as the reign ofLouis XIII (1610–1643) and continued to employ it through the periods ofNapoleon I's Empire (1804–1815).
The fasces typically appeared in a context reminiscent of theRoman Republic and of theRoman Empire. TheFrench Revolution used many references to the ancientRoman Republic in its imagery. During theFirst Republic, topped by thePhrygian cap, the fasces is a tribute to the Roman Republic and means that power belongs to the people. It also symbolizes the "unity and indivisibility of the Republic",[71] as stated in theFrench Constitution.In 1848 andafter 1870, it appears on theseal of the French Republic, held by the figure ofLiberty. There is the fasces in thearms of the French Republic with the "RF" forRépublique française (see image below), surrounded by leaves ofolive tree (as a symbol ofpeace) andoak (as a symbol ofjustice). While it is used widely by French officials, this symbol never was officially adopted by the government.[71]
PresidentValéry Giscard d'Estaing placed one on his presidential flag.[72] In 2015, a logo representing a stylized fasces was used for internet communication by the Presidency of the French Republic.[73] Since 1870, it has also appeared on the badges of deputies and senators known as barometers, which they place conspicuously on their vehicles.
Since the original founding of the United States in the 18th century, several offices and institutions in the United States have heavily incorporated representations of the fasces into much of their iconography.
.png)
The following cases involve the adoption of the fasces as a symbol or icon, although no physical re-introduction has occurred.
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
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.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
