Roman lictor

Bodyguard, usher and enforcer

Lictors were attendants of magistrates who held imperium, the power to command. A consul was escorted by 12 lictors, a praetor usually by 6, and a dictator by 24. They walked in single file ahead of their magistrate, clearing the way through crowds and making sure people stepped aside, removed their hats and showed respect.

Lictors also carried out the magistrate’s orders: summoning people, making arrests, and administering punishment, including flogging and, in earlier periods, beheading. Vestal Virgins and certain priests were also entitled to a lictor.

The fasces on your shoulder

Your symbol was the fasces: a bundle of birch or elm rods tied with red leather straps, with an axe blade projecting from it outside the city. Inside Rome the axe was traditionally removed, to show that citizens there had the right of appeal against execution. When a magistrate met a higher-ranking one, his lictors lowered their fasces in salute.

The fasces came to stand for state authority far beyond Rome. Italian Fascism took its name from them in the 20th century, but they also appear on the reverse of the old US Mercury dime and beside the speaker’s rostrum in the US House of Representatives.

A respectable job for ordinary men

Lictors were usually free citizens of modest background, often freedmen, and were paid by the state. They formed a corporation with their own organisation, and the job could last for years as they served successive magistrates. It was not glamorous, but it offered steady income and a front-row place in Roman public life. You would witness elections, trials and triumphs from a few steps away, and you would need tact as well as muscle: shoving a senator aside, or failing to clear a path fast enough, could embarrass the official you served. Lictors also accompanied magistrates to the provinces, so the job could take you across the Mediterranean.