lictor

plural lictors · alternative obsolete rare lictour

1. An officer in Ancient Rome, attendant on a consul or magistrate, who bore the fasces and was responsible for punishing criminals.

   ‘Beware the power of the mob, Caesar.’ Then, schooled in needful agility, he ran away before a lictor’s whip could reach him.

   1985, Anthony Burgess, Kingdom of the Wicked

   2 more examples

   Hee brought-in likevvise the ancient cuſtome againe, that in vvhat moneth hee had not the Knitches of rods vvith Axes borne before him, a publique Officer called Accensvs ſhould huiſher him before, and the Serjeants or Lictours follovv after behinde.

   1606, Caius [i.e., Gaius] Suetonius Tranquillus, “The Historie of Caius Iulius Cesar Dictator”, in Philêmon Holland, transl., The Historie of Twelve Cæsars Emperours of Rome. […], London: […] [Humphrey Lownes and George Snowdon] for Matthew Lownes, →OCLC, section 20, page 8

   “Regard not that, my brother,” answered Magdalen Græme; “the first successors of Saint Peter himself, were elected not in sunshine but in tempests—not in the halls of the Vatican, but in the subterranean vaults and dungeons of Heathen Rome—they were not gratulated with shouts and salvos of cannon-shot and of musquetry, and the display of artificial fire—no, my brother—but by the hoarse summons of Lictors and Prætors, who came to drag the Fathers of the Church to martyrdom.[…]”

   1820, [Walter Scott], chapter XIII, in The Abbot. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Company, and John Ballantyne, […], →OCLC, page 276