2/18/2024 0 Comments Hand drawing thumbs upAn opposite depiction is the salutatio of a diogmites, a military police officer, who raises his right arm to greet his commander during his adventus on a relief from 2nd-century Ephesus. Occasionally it is a sign of greeting or benevolence, but usually it is used as an indication of power. Unlike modern custom, in which both the leader and the people he addresses raise their arms, most of these scenes show only the senior official raising his hand. These are occasions when a high-ranking official, such as a general or the emperor, addresses individuals or a group, often soldiers. The images closest in appearance to a raised arm salute are scenes in Roman sculpture and coins which show an adlocutio, acclamatio, adventus, or profectio. However, these monuments do not display a single clear image of the Roman salute. Sculptures commemorating military victories such as those on the Arch of Titus, the Arch of Constantine, or on the Column of Trajan are the best-known examples of raised arms in art from this period. But what a speech! He swore his oath with the words: 'so may I achieve the honours of my father!', and at the same time he stretched out his right hand in the direction of his statue." Augustus of Prima Porta For example, Cicero reported that Octavian pledged an oath to Julius Caesar while outstretching his right hand: "Although that youth is powerful and has told Antony off nicely: yet, after all, we must wait to see the end. δεξιά – dexia) was commonly used in antiquity as a symbol of pledging trust, friendship or loyalty. The gesture of the raised right arm or hand in Roman and other ancient cultures that does exist in surviving literature and art generally had a significantly different function and is never identical with the modern straight-arm salute. Not a single Roman work of art displays a salute of this kind. However, this description is unknown in Roman literature and is never mentioned by ancient historians of Rome. According to common perceptions, this salute was based on an ancient Roman custom. The modern gesture consists of stiffly extending the right arm frontally and raising it roughly 135 degrees from the body's vertical axis, with the palm of the hand facing down and the fingers stretched out and touching each other. Onlookers raise their arms to acclaim the emperor The gesture and its variations continue to be used in neo-fascist, neo-Nazi, and Falangist contexts.Įarly Roman sources and images Trajan's Column, Plate LXII. Legal restrictions on its use in Italy are more nuanced and use there has generated controversy. Since the end of World War II, displaying the Nazi variant of the salute has been a criminal offence in Germany, Austria, Czechia, Slovakia, and Poland. It was also adopted by other fascist, far right and ultranationalist movements. It was then adopted as the Nazi salute and made compulsory within the Nazi Party in 1926 and gained national prominence in the German state when the Nazis took power in 1933. In 1923, the salute was gradually adopted by the Italian Fascist regime. Through d'Annunzio's influence, the gesture soon became part of the rising Italian Fascist movement's symbolic repertoire. In 1919, d'Annunzio adopted the cinematographically depicted salute as a neo-imperial ritual when he led an occupation of Fiume. These included the 1914 Italian film Cabiria whose intertitles were written by the fascist poet Gabriele d'Annunzio. The gesture was further elaborated upon in popular culture during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in plays and films that portrayed the salute as an ancient Roman custom. In the United States, a similar salute for the Pledge of Allegiance known as the Bellamy salute was created by Francis Bellamy in 1892. The gesture and its identification with Roman culture were further developed in other neoclassic artworks. īeginning with Jacques-Louis David's painting The Oath of the Horatii (1784), an association of the gesture with Roman republican and imperial culture emerged. However, no Roman text gives this description, and the Roman works of art that display salutational gestures bear little resemblance to the modern Roman salute. In contemporary times, the former is commonly considered a symbol of fascism that had been based on a custom popularly attributed to ancient Rome. In some versions, the arm is raised upward at an angle in others, it is held out parallel to the ground. The Roman salute, alternatively called the Fascist salute, is a gesture in which the right arm is fully extended, facing forward, with palm down and fingers touching. The Oath of the Horatii (1784), by Jacques-Louis David
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