How did an ancient symbol acquire a bad name?
By Chelsie Vandaveer
November 8, 2004
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In Rome, a fascis was a bundle of elm or birch rods. The bundle bound around a staff with an axe facing outward became the fascis of a magistrate and his lictor. The lictor carried the fascis before the magistrate as a symbol of office representing law and the authority to punish crimes—rods for a mere beating, the axe head for death.
The lictor's position was to ensure the magistrate's decree was finalized. The fascis (plural: fasces) was a bundle and a burden, literally and figuratively. As a representation of authority, the bound elm and birch rods became a stylized motif carried down through the ages and carved onto furniture legs and public buildings, stamped onto coins, and decorating military insignia.
In the 1800s, long after the fall of the Roman Empire, the concept of the fascis reappeared as a fascio, a group bound toward a common goal like a farm trade or workers' union. The fascio or fasci served as the authority to ensure the group's best interests, economically and politically. After World War I, combat veterans and military officers formed fasci with the best intentions of having patriotic organizations of people who loved their country.
Then along came Benito Mussolini. And he formed a fasci from the unemployed, the restless, and the disgruntled. They adopted the ancient fascis as the symbol of their party and sought recreating the splendor of Rome. They called themselves the Fasci di Combattimento, the party of struggle.
The Fasci demanded total allegiance to the authority of the party. Under the guise of creating a great nation, patriotism was what the party said it was. There was no tolerance for other ideas or for individuals. People were part of the bundle and had no value except as fodder for the fight. By the time Mussolini ruled, the party and government were one and the same. Simply called the Fascismo, it was the rule of unrelenting and fanatical fascism.
Legion XXIV Media Atlantia is a re-enactment unit showing battle tactics, dress, weapons, and the life in the Roman army. Their website has a great page about fasces, what the objects represented, and how they were carried by the lictors. To learn more about fasces, click on the link:
http://www.legionxxiv.org/fasces%20page/
(Compiled from: The 1889 Century Unabridged Dictionary Online, Global Language Resources; Origins, A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, Eric Partridge, Greenwich House, NY, 1983: Webster's Word Histories, Frederick C. Mish, ed., Merriam-Webster, Inc., Springfield, MA,1989)
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