Origins of the \'Hollywood\' Roman salute?

[Praefectusclassis]

I have no doubt that anyone in a position of legate, governor or other high magistracy would assume the outward posing that goes with that rank.

Class became less about birth, and more about politics, but I don't think they every gave up the notion of "class". The question is did native born patricians distinguish themselves from the noveau riche and upstarts? Would it even have mattered by the latter empire?

No, the notion of patricians and plebeians had become completely irrelevant and this terminology was no longer used. Instead, it became important whether you belonged to a senatorial or equestrian family.

[Graham Sumner]

Travis wrote:

Also, Romans aren't Byzantines.

Travis how could you :wink: . Here am I telling people not to ignore sources if they have Byzantine or Coptic in the title. I know what you mean though, the Byzantine court bore little resemblence to that of Augustus but they still considered themselves Romans. Equally however the court of Diocletian would have been strange to Augustan Romans, what with all those trousers and long sleeves.

Tarbicus wrote:

Are shoes a good way to differentiate between classes. For example, if you're approaching someone and have never seen them before, and if they are wearing a cloak, or the rest of their clothes are hard to distinguish for whatever reason?
_________________

For the super rich upper classes yes. A bit more difficult in the wider context because everyone was trying to climb up the social ladder with wider clavi, fake purples etc. It would be similar today if you went to a wedding and even if all the men were in black suits It would still be possible perhaps to tell how well off everone was by the quality, label of their clothes.

Even if a private Roman soldier wore a yellow brown cloak and white tunic and stood next to an officer also wearing a yellow brown cloak and a white tunic it would still have been possible to tell them apart. The officers cloak and tunic would have been of far better quality both in terms of dye and material. His footwear too would reflect his status even again if they were of similar styles. His weapons also would follow this pattern, (This is something really difficult to put across today in the re-enactment world. After all how many of us could afford gold and silver swords daggers and belts etc.. ) Add to that of course his grooming and bearing.

As for the salute I am still waiting to hear the results of the Di Canio case in Italy where his lawyers are supposed to be finding out the origins of the Roman Salute. If I hear anything I will post straight away.

Graham.

[tlclark]

Travis wrote:

Also, Romans aren't Byzantines.

Travis how could you :wink: . Here am I telling people not to ignore sources if they have Byzantine or Coptic in the title. I know what you mean though, the Byzantine court bore little resemblence to that of Augustus but they still considered themselves Romans. Equally however the court of Diocletian would have been strange to Augustan Romans, what with all those trousers and long sleeves.

Oh I know! I winced just after I wrote it! Eastern Empire is the term gaining purchase in art history circles these days. I agree with Averil Cameron though, that when you go looking for a break between Rome and the Middle Ages, there really is no 'there' there.

Even if a private Roman soldier wore a yellow brown cloak and white tunic and stood next to an officer also wearing a yellow brown cloak and a white tunic it would still have been possible to tell them apart. The officers cloak and tunic would have been of far better quality both in terms of dye and material. His footwear too would reflect his status even again if they were of similar styles. His weapons also would follow this pattern, (This is something really difficult to put across today in the re-enactment world. After all how many of us could afford gold and silver swords daggers and belts etc.. )

No kidding! Of course if you make your own, silver isn't too bad today, whereas it was much more expensive in the ancient world.

Add to that of course his grooming and bearing.

Wouldn't we love to know what those were! We can hardly distinguish broad groups. I would love to know how the manners of Roman "white trash" differed from Roman "WASPS".

As for the salute I am still waiting to hear the results of the Di Canio case in Italy where his lawyers are supposed to be finding out the origins of the Roman Salute. If I hear anything I will post straight away.

If the answer comes to us, I doubt that it will come through the Italian legal system. :wink:

Thanks Graham! Great post as always.

Travis

[Tarbicus]

After all how many of us could afford gold and silver swords daggers and belts etc..

No kidding! Of course if you make your own, silver isn't too bad today, whereas it was much more expensive in the ancient world.

True, but that compares a Roman soldier to a decent law abiding upstanding modern citizen with a normal job. In view of the booty they could accrue through looting and plunder, it may be worth comparing them more to bank robbers without fear of arrest. And a bank robber would definitely be able to afford the good stuff.
:wink:

[Nathan Ross]

With regard to Roman rank and class - the 'patrician' and 'plebian' division still causes a lot of confusion, particularly perhaps in America where (I believe) the term patrician has certain social/political connotations today. As Jasper so rightly says, the division was pretty meaningless by the late Republic - there were only a couple of dozen actual patrician families left by the 1st C BC, and although Augustus elevated some families of the plebian nobility to patrician status, it was mainly a decorative gesture.
Further to Jasper's post, then, I'd say that social class in Rome basically comprised the aristocracy and everyone else. The aristocracy itself was composed of the equestrian order (based in trade and the military, and increasingly civil administration) and the senatorial (based in government and land ownership). Within the senatorial class there were also the Nobiles - the nobility proper: the families of those who had been Consul at some point. The nobility, therefore, comprised both patricians and (overwhelmingly) plebians. Then there were freedmen, who weren't full citizens and thus occupied a fluid position in society - for all the wealth they could possess (cf Trimalchio) they could not join the equestrian order, and thus in theory could not become military officers - in practice some of the more wayward emperors allowed lapses to this rule, and we therefore have men like Nymphidius Sabinus, bastard son of a gladiator and a slave, becoming Praetorian Prefect under Nero and later making a bid for Emperor himself. The vicissitudes of social mobility under the empire could, I'm sure, make a Juvenal of anyone.

If a newly minted officer whose parents had been plebs (or even freedmen!) used a patrician gesture, or adopted patrician manners, what did the native born patricians think of that?

As an officer would have to be a member of the equestrian order anyway, they would be fully accustomed to living in the upper echelons of society already - taking a position in the military would merely be an extension of the standard of living and behaviour they knew in civilian life. According to Birley's 'The Commissioning of Equestrian Officers', the majority of newly-appointed officers beginning their military careers had already served several years in provincial administration, or juristic and bureacratic service in Rome, and would have been well used to pretty high levels of deference! The exception would be the sons of primus pilus centurions, who were sometimes made cohorts prefects in their late teens, but had already spent most of their lives in military camps and thereby 'grown into the service'.

Anyway - back to the topic :o

It definitely seems that the open handed raised arm, with fingers and elbow slightly bent and held naturally is the gesture used by higher ranking officers to lower officers and soldiers.

A salute of this type would be easy to figure out based on status. Everyone of equestrian or patrician status uses this salute to their superiors and inferiors. Everyone else uses the other hand to forehead or helmet gesture.

The raised open hand does seem a speciality of emperors (or commanding generals, pre-Augustus), at least, and it's use in public statuary would imply it had an important meaning. As a guess, (and maybe this has been said already elsewhere) perhaps it symbolised the conferring of a blessing, rather like the 'Papal wave'? The hand touched to the head could therefore connote the receiving of the blessing that has been bestowed. The statue of an emperor with raised right hand would therefore be a sort of benediction to the populace.

- Nathan

[tlclark]

It definitely seems that the open handed raised arm, with fingers and elbow slightly bent and held naturally is the gesture used by higher ranking officers to lower officers and soldiers.

A salute of this type would be easy to figure out based on status. Everyone of equestrian or patrician status uses this salute to their superiors and inferiors. Everyone else uses the other hand to forehead or helmet gesture.

The raised open hand does seem a speciality of emperors (or commanding generals, pre-Augustus), at least, and it's use in public statuary would imply it had an important meaning. As a guess, (and maybe this has been said already elsewhere) perhaps it symbolised the conferring of a blessing, rather like the 'Papal wave'? The hand touched to the head could therefore connote the receiving of the blessing that has been bestowed. The statue of an emperor with raised right hand would therefore be a sort of benediction to the populace.

- Nathan

Well there's a lot of evidence to suggest that you are right. The 'gesture of blessing' of early Christian period is a direct outgrowth of the gesture of oration (Using Brilliant's terms here, which are arbitrary to some extent) When we see Christ in narrative art in the 3rd C. Catacombs, he is often shown in this gesture (sometimes with a wand/staff) particularly in scenes such as the raising of lazarus. So it's obvious that the gesture was interpreted that way by later Christians.

However I don't think that the earliest Christians were adopting it for this reason. The gesture of oration is not a blessing so much as a calling to attention. It communicates the immediacy and importance of the person, but it is clear it is directed at individuals. It shows the connection between the speaker and the ones addressed. The gesture could pronounce a blessing, a call to silence/attention, any direct communication where the superior is directing his communication to the inferior. It communicates an intensity and closeness to the person/diety/ruler not seen outside the naturalistic traditions of classical art. It probably gets appropriated for this reason as an appropriate manner of showing the blessings of Christ, ephasizing his humanity, and then only later comes to be exclusively a gesture of blessing.

The gesture survives in the form of blessing in countless examples in byzantine art. Orthodox monks insist that the three fingers are a direct relationship to the Trinity, but the gesture is known in Roman contexts as well and probably demonstrates the affectation for sensitivity on the part of the artists or patron. A softly and naturally curving hand naturally has a curved little finger and thumb. So a gesture noted for its naturalism and subtlety becomes emblematic and rigid by the later period.

Another thing. If Christians adopt it as a proper humanizing feature of Christ, that yet maintains his status as a superior/diety than it says a lot about the gesture in Roman contexts.

Notice that in all of these cases there is direct eye contact between the adresser and the addressed. The gesture is a very unifying gesture. Emperors of the first C., Unlike say the 10th C. Byzantine counterparts. or even the 5th C. counterparts, could be looked in the eye. So the high hand gesture establishes primacy in a situation where the depictions are othwerwise egalitarian. Trajan is only a half a head taller than anyone else on his column, and his importance is established more by framing, composition and props than anything else. His dress is indistinguishable from the other officers. The gesture established the hierarchy clearly without browbeating the class distinctions. It's a mark of humilty and virtue, frankly, not dominion. Not to say that the Roman Army was some communal egalitarian paradise, far from it. But it says a lot about the Emperors that even though they were autarchs, they didn't care to make themselves LOOK like autarchs, at least not in front of other roman soldiers and Roman audiences at home.

Where am I going with this?

Well it suggests that as Robert says above, any salute system is probably simple and more or less straightforward and unpretentious and relatively egalitarian and efficient, unless the art is altogether lying to us.

[Nathan Ross]

The 'gesture of blessing' of early Christian period is a direct outgrowth of the gesture of oration (Using Brilliant's terms here, which are arbitrary to some extent)

Interesting! I had considered that the raised arm gestures used in public statuary etc were probably similar to the 'rhetorical gestures' used by orators - I'm assuming that this is what you're referring to here. These gestures themselves would be to some extent class or rank based, of course - rhetoric was a specialised artform, and the language of gesture was as important as the words themselves: only someone schooled in rhetoric (at a university, most likely) would have been sufficiently fluent in gesture to use it effectively - therefore, it would have been inherently aristocratic. Rome was, after all, (at least during the Republic and Principiate) a very public political culture - an orator would have to address the people, or the senate, or a court of law, and be sure to be understood - if we are to believe the historians, Roman generals commonly gave public addresses to their troops on the eve of battle, even if their speeches were probably not the polished affairs related by those same historians! The human voice can only carry so far, and gesture would have been of vital importance - likewise, some sort of responsive gesture would have been needed from the 'audience' (whether civil or military) to communicate agreement, support, acclaim or derision (possibly very useful in the third century, that last one!) - what we see on Trajan's Column and elsewhere, then, could be the visual record of a dialogue, of sorts, between leader and led - if these scenes tell a story in pictures, the hand gestures could act as subtitles!

- Nathan

PS - was the 'three raised fingers' Christian benediction the reason why the Capitoline statue of Marcus Aurelius was presumed to be Constantine, and therefore spared destruction in the Christian era?

[tlclark]

what we see on Trajan's Column and elsewhere, then, could be the visual record of a dialogue, of sorts, between leader and led - if these scenes tell a story in pictures, the hand gestures could act as subtitles!

Oh absolutely. The art history term for this is semiotics. Richard Brilliant's book "Gesture and rank in the Roman World" is the first and best on this, although he says nothing about salutes unfortunately. Military history wasn't his focus. My guess is that early Christians must not have any problem with putting Christ in an "aristocratic" mode if they adopted the gesture for his images.

PS - was the 'three raised fingers' Christian benediction the reason why the Capitoline statue of Marcus Aurelius was presumed to be Constantine, and therefore spared destruction in the Christian era?

Gosh I dunno! It's possible that they interpreted it that way but nobody says anything about it. Quite frankly, the origins of that association have always mystified me. It's not like there weren't lots of images of Constatnine available. I suspect the story is partially apocryphal. Art has a lot of 'presence' and commands a lot of attention as a symbol of legitimacy and wealth. You have to remember that this was installed at the Lateran Palace for most of its history. That suggests that the Popes had an interest in it's preservation. My own take on it is that some Pope just liked it and called it Constantine to keep it kosher.

Travis