"Fascism" is a word ubiquitous in our contemporary political discourse, but few know about its roots in the ancient past or its long, strange evolution to the present. In ancient Rome, the fasces were a bundle of wooden rods bound with a leather cord, in which an axe was placed--in essence, a mobile kit for corporal or capital punishment. Attendants typically carried fasces before Rome's higher officials, to induce feelings of respect and fear for the relevant authority. This highly performative Roman institution had a lifespan of almost two millennia, and made a deep impression on subsequent eras, from the Byzantine period to the present. Starting in the Renaissance, we find revivals and reinterpretations of the ancient fasces, accelerating especially after 1789, the first year of the United States' Constitution and the opening volley of the French Revolution. But it was Benito Mussolini, who, beginning in 1919, propagated the fasces on an unprecedented scale. Oddly, today the emblem has grown largely unfamiliar, which in turn has offered an opening to contemporary extremist groups. In The Fasces, T. Corey Brennan offers the first global history of the nature, development, and competing meanings of this stark symbol, from antiquity to the twenty-first century. The word "fascism" has universal awareness in contemporary political discourse, which thus makes this, the first book to trace the full arc of the fasces' almost 3,000-year history, essential reading for all who wish to understand how the past informs the present.
Author(s): T. Corey Brennan
Edition: 1
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2023
Language: English
Commentary: TruePDF | Full TOC
Pages: 305
Tags: Signs And Symbols: Italy: History; Fasces: History
Cover
Half title
The Fasces
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
1 | Introduction to the Roman Fasces
Significance of the Fasces
Rome’s Fasces-Bearing Lictors
Post-Classical Interpretation of the Fasces
Structure and Contribution of this Study
2 | Origins of the Fasces
The Etruscan “Tomb of the Lictor”
The Fasces of the Kings at Rome
The Fasces: Etymology and Parallels
Rome’s Etruscan Kings and the Fasces
Fasces in the First Year of the Republic
The Roman Dictator’s Fasces
Early Administrative Experiments with Fasces
The Double-Axed Fasces
3 | Images of the Roman Fasces
Funerary Fasces in the Republic
The Evidence of the Arieti Tomb
Laureled Fasces
The Dress of Roman Lictors
Fractional Grants of Fasces
Fasces and the Roman Citizen’s Right of Appeal
The Fasces on Republican Coinage
The Fasces on Coins of the Triumviral Era
The Fasces on Coinage of Rome’s Emperors
The Fasces in Later Antiquity
Fasces in the Byzantine Era
4 | Roman Fasces in Action
Rotation of the Fasces
Reductions and Enhancements in the Number
of Fasces
Yielding the Fasces
Succession of Fasces
Commands to Lictors
The Lictors and Crowd Control
Psychological Effects of the Fasces
Lictors and Military Justice
Intrusions by Lictors into the Domestic Sphere
5 | The Roman Fasces: Limits and Discontinuities
Institutional Curbs on the Fasces: The Plebeian Tribunes
Unorganized Resistance to the Fasces
Foreigners’ Fear of the Fasces
Mockery of the Fasces
Seizure and Usurpation of Fasces
Loss of Fasces
Lictors and Bodyguards
6 | Carrying the Fasces
Expansion of Access to the Fasces
Lictors in the Republican Era
The Proximate Lictor
Lictors in the “Apparitorial” System
Social Status and Economic Mobility of Lictors
7 | Roman Fasces in the Medieval and Renaissance Eras
Knowledge of the Fasces at the Turn of the Millennium
Renaissance Humanists and the Fasces
The Fasces in Italian Art of the Renaissance
The Fasces as a Symbol of Justice
The Fasces as a Symbol of Concord
8 | Early Modern and Neoclassical Fasces
Cesare Ripa’s Figurative Handbook and Its Influence
The Fasces of Cardinal Mazarin
Proliferation of Figurative Fasces in Europe
(ca. 1600–1789)
The Fasces of Louis XIV (1689)
Dilution of the Fasces as Emblem
9 | Popular and Revolutionary Fasces
Fasces on the London Stage (Seventeenth Century)
Fasces and the Young United States
French Revolutionary Fasces
The Fasces on French Coinage of the
Revolutionary Era
The Impact of French Revolutionary Fasces
Napoleon and the Fasces
10 | American Fasces
Prologue: Fasces and the Lincoln Memorial (1922)
Fasces and the Military of the Early United States
Fasces and the United States Capitol
Fasces in the American Civil War and Aftermath
Fasces in the United States during the Rise
of Fascism
11 | Constructing Fasces in Mussolini’s Italy
The “Fascio” in Italy before 1922
The Fasces in Mussolini’s “March on Rome”
Mass Marketing the Fasces in Early Fascist Italy
A Gift of “Mystical” Fasces to Mussolini
Amplification of the Fasces under Mussolini
12 | Eradication of Fasces and Epilogue
American Resistance to the Fasces in the
Era of World War II
Italian Fasces under Nazi Control
The Fate of the Fasces in Rome’s Foro Mussolini
The Fasces in Contemporary Cityscapes
Epilogue
Abbreviations and Note on Translations
Notes
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Bibliography
Index
