“ LICTORS (lictores) , in Roman antiquities, a class of the attendants (apparitores) upon certain Roman and provincial magistrates. [1] As an institution (supposed by some to have been borrowed from Etruria) 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, perhaps girded up ”

“ Lictors were also assigned to private individuals at the celebration of funeral games, and to the aediles at the games provided by them and the theatrical representations under their supervision.
For the fullest account of the lictors, see Mommsen, Römisches Staatsrecht, i. 355, 374 (3rd ed., 1887) .
↑ The Greek equivalents of lictor are ῥαβδοῦχος, ῥαβδοφόρος, ῥαβδονόμος (rod-bearer) ; the Latin word is variously derived from: (a) ligare, to bind or arrest a criminal; (b) licere, to summon, as convoking assemblies or haling offenders before the magistrate ”

“ They walked before him in Indian file, 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 earlier times) carried out the death sentence. ”