Lictor

A lictor (possibly from Latin ligare, meaning 'to bind'[1]) was a Roman civil servant who was an attendant and bodyguard to a magistrate who held imperium.

With the approval of the Senate, Tarquin then appointed twelve lictors to attend to him when exercising military and civil authority.

Livy also sides with an Etruscan origin, dismissing the variant story that Romulus appointed one lictor for each of the twelve birds that appeared to him in augury at the foundation of the city.

Ancient sources also offer two other possibilities: from the belt or apron (licium and limus, respectively) that they wore or, less plausibly, via borrowing from a supposed Greek cognate.

Lictors were exempted from military service, received a fixed salary (of 600 sestertii, in the beginning of the Empire), and were organized in a corporation.

[citation needed] A lictor's main role was to bodyguard the imperium-posessing magistrate to which they were assigned.

The fasces also served to intimidate a crowd since they contained all the necessary equipment to administer corporal and capital punishment.

If there was a crowd, the lictors opened the way and kept their master safe, pushing all aside except for Roman matrons, who were accorded special honor.

Lictors also had legal and penal duties; they could, at their master's command, arrest Roman citizens and punish them.