Fasces on the reverse of the US dime

A statue of Cincinnatus returning the Roman fasces

Fasces consist of a bundle of wooden rods tied together as a cylinder around an axe.

The fasces lictoriae ("bundles of the lictors") (in Italian, fascio littorio) symbolised power and authority (imperium) in ancient Rome. Guardians called lictors 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 the triumphs (public celebrations held in Rome after a military conquest) heroic soldiers (they had to have 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 power to decapitate, and has a long history in the eastern Mediterranean: see Labrys, the Anatolian and Minoan double-headed axe.

Traditionally axe blades were removed from fasces inside the Pomerium, the limits of the City of Rome. Lictors attending to Dictators, however, kept the axe blades even inside the city.

At the Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC, Lincoln's seat of state bears the fasces on the fronts of its arms

Various authorities have adopted fasces as a symbol or icon over the years:

• Napoleon following the French Revolution; this emblem remains on the front cover of French passports
• The Spanish police Guardia Civil
• In the 1920s, the fasces became the symbol - and a source of the name - of Italian Fascism
• Used as part of the Knights of Columbus emblem (designed in 1883)

Fasces on the flag of the Swiss canton of St. Gallen.

Related Topics

• fascio (usage 1890s to World War I)
• Labrys
• staff of office

External links

• A definition
• Fasces in flags