Review

Is this the world’s most dangerous political symbol?

In his new book The Fasces, T Corey Brennan follows a symbol of authority from ancient Rome, via Mussolini and Lincoln, to today's far Right

French Revolution wallpaper (c1792) featuring a pair of crossed fasces
French Revolution wallpaper (c1792) featuring a pair of crossed fasces Credit: Alamy

“The fascist conception of life is a religious one,” Benito Mussolini, the revolutionary socialist who invented fascism, wrote in 1932. Its aim was to create “a spiritual society”. The masses do not have to know, only believe, il Duce used to say, because “only faith moves mountains, not reason”.

The fascist equivalent of the crucifix was the fasces – a bundle of wooden rods bound together around an axe by leather straps – which was the symbol of imperium (authority) in ancient Rome.

Those with authority, such as emperors, commanders and magistrates, were escorted in public by up to 12 lictors who each carried a fasces – derived from the Latin word for bundle. The rods, and if necessary, the axe itself, were used not just as a symbol, or deterrent, but also as a tool of punishment.

During the two decades of the fascist dictatorship in Italy, Mussolini made the fasces the symbol of his regime. It was omnipresent, from coins to manhole covers, and buildings to cigarettes.

T Corey Brennan, a classics professor at Rutgers University who is also a rock guitarist once mentioned in despatches by radio DJ John Peel, was inspired to write this history of the fasces by watching television footage of the “Unite the Right” demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 at which a left-wing protester was run over and killed. 

“I was stunned to see from news reports that some of the participating hate groups had chosen a Roman-style fasces as their symbol,” he writes. Here was “a genuinely compelling subject”, he adds, with “real contemporary relevance”.

White Supremacists at the Unite the Right rally
Protestors at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where some groups used the fasces as a symbol Credit: Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Much of the book is taken up with a dense discussion of the fasces and the lictors in Ancient Rome which I fear will only interest a specialist audience. It is also irritating that the author kowtows to the increasingly dominant woke agenda by using BCE for BC, and CE for AD.

Despite this, the book does become compelling once the western Roman Empire collapses in 476AD and it romps through the Dark and Middle Ages plus the Renaissance, when not a lot happens on the fasces front, and arrives in the 18th century.

By then, the fasces had become very popular across western Europe and come to symbolize not just authority but justice, and also strength through unity. The bound rods and axe became such a powerful symbol of the strength of the newly independent individual American colonies bound together that the fasces was nearly chosen instead of the eagle as their new national seal.

In the French Revolution, meanwhile, the official print of the original Rights of Man statement in 1789 is divided in half by a fasces with spear whose straps are red white and blue. And the phrase coined by Robespierre in 1790 “Liberté, E’galité, Fraternité” was soon represented by three women – one of whom – Fraternité – held a fasces with axe to symbolize solidarity. The coat of arms of France still features as its main element a gold fasces with axe.

The fasces continued to be a predominent political symbol well into the 20th century in America. A fasces with axe was the image on one side of the dime coin – 10 cents – from 1916 to 1946. The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, completed in 1922, has the great man sitting in a chair whose arm rests are huge fasces.

An Italian illustration (c1842) of an Ancient Roman lictor carrying a fasces
An Italian illustration (c1842) of an Ancient Roman lictor carrying a fasces Credit: De Agostini Picture Library via Getty Images

The author is perplexed that, even after Mussolini seized power that same year, it did little to dampen enthusiasm in America for the prominent use of the fasces in important architectural projects. What he does not seem to appreciate fully is that, until Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1935, he was extremely popular both in Italy and abroad. President Franklin D Roosevelt was an admirer and Cole Porter’s hit song You’re the Top included the lines “You’re the Top! You’re the great Houdini!/ You’re the top! You’re Mussolini!”

In Italy, with the defeat of fascism in 1945, the Italians often boarded up and left abandoned fascist buildings for decades as if they wanted to postpone confronting fascism. But they always tried to eradicate the fasces from them nevertheless.

In the town hall of Predappio, for example, the small Apennine town where Mussolini was born and is buried, and where for most of the post-war period the communist and post-communist Left ran the council, they continued to use the red leather bound chairs that were used during the facist regime. But they scratched off the fasces that was embossed into the leather. And on the town’s coat of arms, they replaced the fasces with a bunch of grapes.

In Italy, the fasces has disappeared from the public square but not the word fascism which derives from it. But in America, as the author explains so comprehensively, “it would be hard to eradicate the symbol of the fasces in America without dismantling a good bit of the US Capitol, the principal components of the Jefferson Memorial, and countless other public structures and monuments nationwide.”


The Fasces: A History of Ancient Rome's Most Dangerous Political Symbol is published by OUP at £22.99. To order your copy call 0844 871 1514 or visit Telegraph Books

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