The Fasces: A History Of Ancient Rome's Most Dangerous Political Symbol

"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.