LICTORS [Lat. lictores], in Roman antiquities, a class of the attendants (apparitores) upon certain Roman and provincial magistrates. As an institution they went back to the regal period and continued to exist till imperial times. The majority of the city lictors were freedmen ; they formed a corporation divided into decuries, from which the lictors of the magistrates in office were drawn ; provincial officials had the nomination of their own. In Rome they wore the toga; on a campaign and at the celebra tion of a triumph, the red military cloak (sagulum) ; at funerals, black. As representatives of magistrates who possessed the im perium, they carried the fasces (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 of the magistrate to whom they were at tached. They 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 of which they stood the fasces; summoned offenders before him, seized, bound and scourged them, and (in early times) carried out the death sentence. Directly a magistrate
entered an allied, independent state, he was obliged to dispense with his lictors. Each of the consuls had 12 lictors; the dictator, as representing both consuls, 24; the emperors 12, until the time of Domitian, who had 24. The Flamen Dialis, and each of the Vestals were also accompanied by lictors. These lictors were probably supplied from the lictores curiatii, 3o in number, whose functions were specially religious, one of them being in attend ance on the pontifex maximus. They originally summoned the comitia curiata, and when its meetings became merely a f or mality, acted as the representatives of that assembly.