LICTORS (lictores)

This article appears in Volume V16, Page 588 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: LEO-LOB

LICTORS (lictores) , in Roman antiquities, a class of the attendants (apparitores) upon certain Roman and provincial magistrates.' As an institution (supposed by some to have been borrowed from Etruria) they went back to the regal period and continued to exist till imperial time's. The majority of the city

lictors

LICTORS (lictores)

were freedmen; they formed a

corporation

CORPORATION (from Lat. corporare, to form into a
body
- BODY
, corpus, corporis)

divided into decuries, from which the

lictors

LICTORS (lictores)

of the magistrates in office were

drawn

DRAWN

; provincial officials had the nomination of their own. In Rome they wore the toga, perhaps girded up; on a campaign and at the celebration of a

triumph

TRIUMPH (triumphus)

, the red military cloak (sagulum); at funerals, black. ' As representatives of magistrates who possessed the imperium, they carried the fasces and axes in front of them (see FASCES). They were exempt from military service; received a fixed salary; theoretically they were nominated for a year, but really for life. They were the constant attendants, both in and out of the

house

, of the

magistrate

MAGISTRATE (Lat. magistratus, from magister, master, properly a public office, hence the person holding such an office)

to whom they were attached. They walked before him in Indian file, cleared a passage for him (summovere) through the crowd, and saw that he was received with the marks of respect due to his rank. They Stood by him when he took his seat on the tribunal; mounted guard before his

house

, against the

wall

WALL (O. Eng. weal, weall, Mid. Eng. wal, wane, adapted from Lat. vallum, rampart; the
original
- ORIGINAL
O. Eng. word for a wall was wag or tenth)
WALL, RICHARD (1694-1778)

of which they stood the fasces; summoned offenders before him, seized, bound and scourged them, and (in earlier times) carried out the death sentence. It should be noted that directly a

magistrate

MAGISTRATE (Lat. magistratus, from magister, master, properly a public office, hence the person holding such an office)

entered an allied, independent state, he was obliged to dispense with nis lictors. The king had twelve lictors; each of the consuls (immediately after their institution) twelve, subsequently limited to' the monthly officiating

consul

, although Caesar appears to have restored the

original

ORIGINAL

arrangement; the dictator, as representing both consuls, twenty-four; the emperors twelve, until the time of Domitian, who'had' twenty-four. The Flamen Dialis, each of the Vestals, the magister-vicorum (over-seer of the sections into which the city was divided) were also accompanied by lictors. These lictors were probably supplied from the lictores curiatii, thirty in number, whose functions were specially religious, one of them being in' attendance on the pontifex maximus. They originally summoned the comitia curiata, and when its meetings became merely.a formality, acted as the representatives of that assembly. Lictors were also assigned to private individuals at the celebration of funeral games, and 'to the aediles at the games provided by them and the theatrical representations under their supervision.
For the fullest account of the lictors, see Mommsen, Romisches Staatsrecht, i. 355, 374 (3rd ed,t887).

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