(T. As.)
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; on a campaign and at the celebration of a triumph, the red military cloak (sagulum); at funerals, black. As representatives of magistrates who possessed the imperium, they carried the fasces and axes in front of them (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, both in and out of the house, of the magistrate to whom they were attached. 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. It should be noted that directly a magistrate entered an allied, independent state, he was obliged to dispense with his lictors. The king had twelve lictors; each of the consuls (immediately after their institution) twelve, subsequently limited to the monthly officiating consul, although Caesar appears to have restored the original arrangement; the dictator, as representing both consuls, twenty-four; the emperors twelve, until the time of Domitian, who had twenty-four. The Flamen Dialis, each of the Vestals, the magister-vicorum (overseer of the sections into which the city was divided) were also accompanied by lictors. These lictors were probably supplied from the lictores curiatii, thirty in number, whose functions were specially religious, one of them being in attendance on the pontifex maximus. They originally summoned the comitia curiata, and when its meetings became merely a formality, acted as the representatives of that assembly. 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).
[1] 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; (c) licium, the girdle with which (according to some) their toga was held up; (d) Plutarch (Quaestiones Romanae, 67), assuming an older form λιτωρ, suggests an identification with λειτουργός, one who performs a public office.
LIDDELL, HENRY GEORGE (1811-1898), English scholar and divine, eldest son of the Rev. Henry George Liddell, younger brother of the first Baron Ravensworth, was born at Binchester, near Bishop Auckland, on the 6th of February 1811. He was educated at Charterhouse and Christ Church, Oxford. Gaining a double first in 1833, Liddell became a college tutor, and was ordained in 1838. In the same year Dean Gaisford appointed him Greek reader in Christ Church, and in 1846 he was appointed to the headmastership of Westminster School. Meanwhile his life work, the great Lexicon (based on the German work of F. Passow), which he and Robert Scott began as early as 1834, had made good progress, and the first edition appeared in 1843. It immediately became the standard Greek-English dictionary and still maintains this rank, although, notwithstanding the great additions made of late to our Greek vocabulary from inscriptions, papyri and other sources, scarcely any enlargement has been made since about 1880. The 8th edition was published in 1897. As headmaster of Westminster Liddell enjoyed a period of great success, followed by trouble due to the outbreak of fever and cholera in the school. In 1855 he accepted the deanery of Christ Church, then vacant by the death of Gaisford. In the same year he brought out a History of Ancient Rome (much used in an abridged form as the Student’s History of Rome) and took a very active part in the first Oxford University Commission. His tall figure, fine presence and aristocratic mien were for many years associated with all that was characteristic of Oxford life. Coming just at the transition period when the “old Christ Church,” which Pusey strove so hard to preserve, was inevitably becoming broader and more liberal, it was chiefly due to Liddell that necessary changes were effected with the minimum of friction. In 1859 Liddell welcomed the then prince of Wales when he matriculated at Christ Church, being the first holder of that title who had matriculated since Henry V. In conjunction with Sir Henry Acland, Liddell did much to encourage the study of art at Oxford, and his taste and judgment gained him the admiration and friendship of Ruskin. In 1891, owing to advancing years, he resigned the deanery. The last years of his life were spent at Ascot, where he died on the 18th of January 1898. Dean Liddell married in July 1846 Miss Lorina Reeve (d. 1910), by whom he had a numerous family.
See memoir by H. L. Thompson, Henry George Liddell (1899).