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A fasces image, with the axe in the middle of the bundle of rods. A fasces (/ ˈ f æ s iː z / FASS-eez, Latin:; a plurale tantum, from the Latin word fascis, 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.
Bronze statuette of a Roman lictor carrying a fasces, 20 BC to 20 AD. A lictor (possibly from Latin ligare, meaning 'to bind' [1]) was a Roman civil servant who was an attendant and bodyguard to a magistrate who held imperium. Roman records describe lictors as having existed since the Roman Kingdom, and may have originated with the Etruscans. [2]
The original symbol of fascism in Italy under Benito Mussolini was the fasces. This is an ancient Imperial Roman symbol of power carried by lictors in front of magistrates; a bundle of sticks featuring an axe, indicating the power over life and death.
Italian Fascists also idolized Augustus as the champion who built the Roman Empire. [11] The fasces – a symbol of Roman authority – was the symbol of the Italian Fascists and was additionally adopted by many other national fascist movements formed in emulation of Italian Fascism. [14]
The French Republic continued this Roman symbol to represent state power, justice, and unity. [2] During the Revolution, the fasces image was often used in conjunction with many other symbols. Though seen throughout the French Revolution, perhaps the most well known French reincarnation of the fasces is the Fasces surmounted by a Phrygian cap.
Imperium was indicated in two prominent ways: a curule magistrate or promagistrate carried an ivory baton surmounted by an eagle as his personal symbol of office; [4] any such magistrate was also escorted by lictors bearing the fasces (traditional symbols of imperium and authority), when outside the pomerium, axes being added to the fasces to ...
This way of designing architecture, characterized by the combination of abstraction and a concrete historical vocabulary of forms, took its name, which refers to the fasces symbols of fascism, already in the 1930s, so as to distinguish a design trend in progress and favored by the fascist regime especially for public works.
Besides its symbolic aspects, the fasces had been carried by the lictors of ancient Rome as a representation of authority. [51] [69] April 21, the anniversary of the founding of Rome, was proclaimed a Fascist holiday that was intended to replace the socialist Labour Day as a celebration of the Roman virtues of "work" and "discipline". [70]