A bundle of rods bound together around an ax with the blade projecting, carried before ancient Roman magistrates as an emblem of authority.
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A bundle of rods bound about an ax with projecting blade, carried before ancient Roman magistrates as a symbol of authority: later, the symbol of Italian fascism.
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A Roman symbol of judicial authority consisting of a bundle of wooden sticks, with an axe blade embedded in the centre; used also as a symbol of fascism.
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Origin of fasces
Latin fascēspl. offascisbundle
From
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition
The place is little mentioned in ancient literature, though Silius Italicus tells us that it was hence that the Romans took their magisterial insignia (fasces, curule chair, purple toga and brazen trumpets), and it was undoubtedly one of the twelve cities of Etruria.
Its pliant and flexible branches are made into brooms; and in ancient Rome the fasces of the lictors, with which they cleared the way for the magistrates, were made up of birch rods.
The lictors and the fasces were so inseparably connected that they came to be used as synonymous terms. The fasces originally represented the power over life and limb possessed by the kings, and after the abolition of the monarchy, the consuls, like the kings, were preceded by twelve fasces.