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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.
Numerous governments and other authorities have used the image of the fasces as a symbol of power since the end of the Roman Empire. Italian fascism, which derives its name from the fasces, arguably used this symbolism the most in the 20th century. However, unlike for example the swastika, the fasces have avoided the stigma associated with fascist symbolism, and many authorities continue to display them.
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Antiquity
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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.
Believed to be of Etruscan origin, the symbolism of the fasces at one level suggested strength through unity. The bundle of rods bound together symbolizes the strength which a single rod lacks. The axe symbolized the state's power and authority. The rods symbolized the state's obligation to exercise restraint in the excersing of that power. The highest magistrates were known to have their lictors unbind the fasces they carried as a warning that the limit of restraint were being approached. The origin is Etruscan and may have an earlier link to the eastern Mediterranean — such as the labrys, the Anatolian and Minoan double-headed axe, which were later incorporated into the praetorial fasces.
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. However, during times of emergencies when the Roman Empire was placed under a dictatorship (dictatura), lictors attending to the dictator kept the axe blades even inside the Pomerium — a sign that the dictator had the ultimate power in his own hands. But in 48 BC, guards holding bladed fasces guided Vatia Isauricus to the tribunal of Marcus Caelius, and Vatia Isauricus used one to destroy Caelius's magisterial chair (sella curulis).
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Various modern authorities and movements
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The following cases all involve the adoption of the fasces as a symbol or icon; no actual physical re-introduction has occurred.
In the 1920s, Italian Fascism, adapating aesthetic elements of ancient Rome attempted to portray itself as a revival of its 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.
At the Lincoln Memorial, Lincoln's seat of state bears the fasces on the fronts of its arms.
The reverse of the United States "Mercury" dime (minted from 1916 to 1945) bears the design of a 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.
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See also
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