Symbolic Icons in Ancient Roman Art Work Meaning of a Dog in 14th Centary Rome Art

This is an ancient marble copy of a shield called the clipeus virtutis awarded to Augustus in 27 BCE and hung in the Senate House in Rome. The central inscription notes its laurels by the "Senatus / Populusque Romanus" (Senate and Roman People) equally a ways of legitimizing the unprecedented honor using the language of the Commonwealth. The shield is now on brandish in the museum in Arles (paradigm by Carole Raddato via Flickr and used past permission).

Upon the triumphal arches, the altars, and the coins of Rome, SPQR stood for Senatus Populusque Romanus (the Senate and the Roman people). In antiquity, it was a shorthand ways of signifying the entirety of the Roman state by referencing its 2 component parts: Rome's Senate and her people. While today the abbreviation is used rather innocuously in most instances, contempo reports have shown that a growing number of white supremacist groups have begun to adopt the aboriginal acronym to symbolize their movement — and utilize it in a militaristic mode starkly different from the ways in which the Romans really practical it.

A July 2018 post on Pharos, a website committed to exposing the modern cribbing of classical texts and imagery by hate groups, addressed the manipulation of SPQR by white nationalist groups in the Usa and consulted classical scholars about the history of the phrase. The issue was brought to the site'southward attention when debate arose about a SPQR flag flown exterior a student rental house in Athens, Ohio late concluding year. The question was whether a local activist grouping was justified in labeling the flag every bit a Nazi symbol. The Pharos site is run past Vassar College classicist Curtis Dozier, who spoke to Hyperallergic nigh Pharos's all-encompassing documentation of the use of SPQR: "The examples we documented connected the symbol to European racial and cultural purity, idealization of military power and violence, and admiration of Hitler and Nazi ideology." But in gild to empathise the roots of this troubling appropriation of ancient language and iconography — and to distinguish its diverse uses by groups, some of whom merely wish to admire ancient Rome — we must first look back at the long history of the acronym. A historical examination accentuates the fact that SPQR underwent several visual manipulations throughout antiquity, the late eye ages, and and then under the fascist regime of Mussolini, both in literature and visual art.

Most of our literary references to "Senatus Populusque Romanus" come from the late Republican era statesman and rhetorician Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE), though Caesar, Livy, Augustus, Pliny, and many other late Latin authors used it likewise. Cicero saw it as an essential compromise of power within the constitution of the democracy: 2 groups that checked each other'southward authority. The most prevalent use of the acronym for the phrase is not in texts — which allowed for expansive writing — but upon numismatic evidence (i.e. coinage) where space was limited and thus often had familiar abbreviations.

In comments to Hyperallergic, ancient historian and classical numismatist Liv Yarrow noted the absenteeism of SPQR coins during the flow of the Republic and its later apply as a means of justifying autocracy while harkening back to an earlier historic period:

SPQR is wholly absent from the Republican [era] coins series (a fact I had to spend some time double checking). Yep, arguments from silence (or absence) are difficult to make in aboriginal history because of fragmentary survival rates.

A silvery denarius of Augustus minted betwixt xx BCE-19 BCE with the obverse bearing the laureate profile of Augustus and the reverse side portraying an altar inscribed (image via the American Numismatic Society [ANS])

Yarrow is conscientious to note that nosotros begin to run into the shorthand SPQR minted on coins under Augustus, the originator of the Roman Principate. This was the man who ushered in the imperial catamenia and later stood as a model for men like Mussolini:

SPQR does begin to appear on the coinage merely at the moment that Augustus is trying to legitimate his ain boggling public honors, and his claims to have "restored" the republic. Augustus built his restoration on a rhetoric of decline ("I'll make Rome great again"). He advocated a "return" to greater religiosity and morality, but his bodily reshaping of Roman society established an indelible monarchy.

Augustus would utilise the full phrase within his Res Gestae Divi Augusti, an epic biographical inscription listing all of his deeds, which was sent out across the provinces in both Latin and Greek. On his coinage, he shortened the legitimizing phrase to just SPQR in guild to preserve the myth that the Democracy even so lived on.

What is notably missing from the aboriginal coinage known today (searchable within the American Numismatic Order's Mantis Money database) and from pieces of classical art that survive from antiquity are images of SPQR imprinted on the actual military standards and vexillations carried by the Roman army. While Roman coinage sometimes have standards on them with SPQR inscribed on the edges, information technology is difficult to detect any bear witness that they were ever on war machine flags carried by the army. War machine historians like Rosemary Moore, a professor of aboriginal history at the University of Iowa and a veteran herself, noted to me the consummate omission of such detail by ancient authors and artists:

The absence of evidence is of course not evidence for absence. It'south not surprising that there are gaps in our knowledge of the ancient globe, because much evidence has been lost. At the aforementioned time, it's worth thinking nigh why some modern people would similar to see SPQR on a Roman military standard — it has to do with how they imagine Rome was, or ideas, even ideologies, they desire to associate with Rome.

A vexillarius holds a Roman vexillum (military flag) on a painted plaster delineation of Julius Terentius performing a Sacrifice in 239 CE from Dura Europos in Syria (prototype via Yale University Art Gallery)

Despite that video games, movies, and myriad modern pop culture images that acquaintance SPQR with the Roman army of the Republic (509–31 BCE), this seems to exist a modern fiction. Fifty-fifty ordinarily reputable sources like the online Ancient History Encyclopedia fall prey to perpetuating the idea of the link betwixt the army and the acronym. In an entry for Roman military standards, they note:

In the time of the Roman Republic the Standards were imprinted with the letters SPQR which was an abridgement for Senatus Populusque Romanus (Senate and People of Rome). The Standard, then, represented non only the legion or cohort which carried it only the citizens of Rome, and the policies the army represented.

In social club to illustrate this point, the encyclopedia notably uses an artist's rendering from Sega's video game Rome II: Total War, which non only falsely depicts the Pantheon beside the Colosseum, but also shows a Roman standard-bearer holding the famed Roman aquila (eagle) with SPQR inscribed underneath it.

Although Constantine would use SPQR every bit part of his propaganda in the early quaternary century CE, it cruel out of favor in the catamenia of the afterwards Roman empire. It would resurface in the high medieval menstruation. And just as Augustus had manipulated the iconic abbreviation for his own agenda, it would over again be repurposed and reinterpreted to fit the needs of the institution and the institutor.

The only extant vexillum from a Roman standard is now in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Russia. It notably does not take SPQR on it, but does accept the goddess Victory belongings a wreath to crown a victor (image via Wikimedia)

Professor and medieval historian Carrie East. Beneš tracked the precarious use of SPQR as "a discussion or image with a meaning beyond itself" for various political and cultural movements in a pivotal commodity for the journal Speculum. She mentions that it was used in a pop uprising in Rome in the twelfth century as locals tried to reassert their aboriginal civic rights, and by a papal notary in the 14th century who viewed the abbreviation as referring to Christ'due south sacrifice on the cantankerous. In her enquiry, Beneš demonstrates that SPQR became a heraldic visual symbol rather than a simple abbreviation from 1100–1400 and "That cultural ambiguity meant that the symbol generally had to depend on its immediate context for its pregnant and implications." In remarks to Hyperallergic, the historian elaborated:

The acronym retained a sense of authority fifty-fifty as it ceased to make literal sense, and that fact was exploited in the Middle Ages by pretty much everyone who wanted to channel and lay claim to the authorisation of ancient Rome: the Roman commune, the papacy, the Roman emperors (who were actually German, but that didn't cease them), and then on. That's really the first period in which nosotros see the symbol's astonishing flexibility and malleability, also as its attraction for multiple people or groups wanting to evoke or lay merits to a particular vision of aboriginal Rome.

SPQR and this faux vision of Rome continued to be a canvas upon which others could both projection their own significant while still conjuring a familiar visual connection to the foretime ability of an empire. This was to go particularly true with the political movements of the early 20th century. In her study of classical reception within Italy under the reign of Mussolini, Lorna Hardwick, a professor emerita of classical studies at the Open University, noted the dictator's appropriation of Roman symbols, buildings, and texts and then as to conjure legitimacy and forward racist propaganda:

From the establishment of Mussolini's power base in 1922 until the proclamation of the dictatorship in 1925, aboriginal Rome was appropriated as a model for electric current political and armed services organization and equally a symbol of Italian unity. Then the image of Rome took a new management during the invasion of Abyssinia and the declaration of an Italian empire in 1936. In the third phase in the late 1930s a climate of increasing racism was created and the Romans and the Latin language were used to define the supposed physical and spiritual and cultural superiority of the modernistic Italians.

Il Duce'southward appropriation of the visual imagery of Rome included the rebuilding of the Senate House (the Curia Senatus) in Rome, the re-inscribing of Augustus' aforementioned Res Gestae on a new gleaming white marble slab for his new Ara Pacis Museum, and the use of SPQR in his own propaganda. His stamps of ability used the familiar Roman abbreviation. Mussolini as well popularized the use of SPQR manhole covers seen across the urban landscape of the city even today, though the do predated him by a number of years. In Nazi Germany, Rome's eagle standard would itself later become a  symbol used by Hitler in social club to unify his party nether the banner of another antiquarian symbol. Encouraging popular unity through the use of a familiar symbols of power is and was a common tactic of Fascism.

In office due to Mussolini'south reawakening of Roman military standards and iconography, these remixed symbols have seeped into American culture also. Historical fiction, TV shows, and videogames focused on ancient Rome have all perpetuated the use of SPQR as symbolic of the Roman armed services, which may have influenced white nationalist groups to adopt it as well. Their use of tattoos, t-shirts, and flags that provide an artful rallying point and the visual equivalent of a dog whistle has not gone unnoticed by Dozier and others attempting to translate the icons of the alt-correct. As the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) showtime documented in a guide to the utilise of detest symbols and flags following the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally in August of 2017, SPQR is often iconographically synthesized with the apply of the fasces — a bundle of sticks symbolic of Roman magisterial power that was also reused by Mussolini — and the Roman military hawkeye as a symbol of Western white male supremacy.

Historians are quick to point out that Roman artifact is non the only historical flow that white nationalists take appropriated or borrowed from. Cord Whitaker, a professor of English language at Wellesley College, noted:

Along with the adaptation of Mussolini-era uses of SPQR, the alt-correct, neo-Nazis, and other racist groups have taken upward the writings of Italian philosopher and pseudo-medievalist Julius Evola. Evola, particularly in his Revolt Against the Modern Globe, invokes the Knights Templar to debate for a kind of spiritual knighthood that supersedes what he calls "exoteric devotional Christianity" with a more than mystical chivalry. Evola'southward thought was influential for Mussolini and informs alt-right arguments for the superiority of the Greco-Roman world, modern white claims to Greco-Roman heritage, and the belief that the European Center Ages present an idyllic and homogeneously white time and place that, according to adherents, should exist used as a model for the United states's conversion into a white ethno-land.

A belatedly 15th-century copy of Roman writer Valerius Maximus originally made in France has a heraldic use of SPQR in the illuminations (paradigm via the British Library).

Other historians accept also pointed out the penchant for ignoring the factual history of the abbreviation and seizing upon their own fiction of the by. One of them is Dame Mary Beard, who has herself waded into discussions of race and ethnicity with some success, just who has also been criticized for colonialist language. She has written extensively on SPQR'due south antiquarian usage. In comments to Hyperallergic, she remarked that she suspected white nationalists didn't find much to agree with in her 2015 bestseller S.P.Q.R.: A History of Ancient Rome:

If they actually read a few pages of my book, they found it wasn't backing up their crusade. So I don't believe I got conscripted. In some ways information technology is a slogan that is very difficult to pin down (which I rather similar) … and the fact that information technology is still all over the place in modernistic Rome helps that un-pin-down-ability.

Still, Bristles believes the cribbing is peradventure more prevalent in the U.S. and Italy than in the United kingdom: "In general, the right-wing reaction to SPQR (the book) has been to deride it every bit modernist multiculturalism, or even more than to tell me off for not appreciating Roman armed forces genius."

As Pharos and others have documented, a skinhead group within Rome has adopted the name SPQR.

The cardinal to understanding the use and abuse of SPQR for over two millennia is maybe flexibility. As Beard and Beneš have, Dozier similarly notes the ability of the symbol or text to be used in multiple ways.

[SPQR] is interesting because it'southward and so polyvalent (and the Beneš article shows that information technology has a long history of being polyvalent), and in a sense, is and then contested (even though I recollect most tourists [or] historians etc. who utilize it don't realize it's also a hate symbol) … those of us who beloved antiquity, beloved SPQR, dear Rome, need to be enlightened that it can exist used every bit a hate symbol and also to be vigilant that those connotations aren't allowed to become the predominant ones.

While not all applications of SPQR are meant to reference white supremacist ideals, the current work of classicists, medievalists, and modern historians to isolate, interpret, and then underscore its current abuse has been heartening to many who wish to empathize how the by has go distorted in the lens of the alt-right. Yarrow perhaps put the concerns of ancient historians all-time: "That SPQR should reappear in our current political climate is concerning, not only considering it seeks to use history to legitimate racist agendas, but because historically the phrase was used to justify autocratic, disciplinarian rule." Recognizing the shades of difference between the Senatus Populusque Romanus of the democracy and the SPQR of Augustus and Mussolini means commencement understanding the fine line between upholding a republic that represents multiple voices rather than supporting an autocracy that allows for simply one.

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Source: https://hyperallergic.com/457510/the-misuse-of-an-ancient-roman-acronym-by-white-nationalist-groups/

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