Elon Musk gestures while speaking at an indoor Presidential Inauguration parade event in Washington, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. (AP Photo)
Samuel Agbamu, University of Reading
How often do you think about the Roman empire? Elon Musk claims to think about it every day. Given his frequent references to Roman antiquity, I think we can take him at his word.
From airing his views on the fall of the Roman empire (demographic decline) to expressing his desire to see a “modern-day Sulla”, Musk’s views on ancient Rome demand our attention. Sulla, by the way, was the notorious first-century BC dictator who had hundreds of his political opponents murdered.
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On January 20 at a rally to mark the inauguration of Donald Trump for his second term as president, Musk acknowledged the crowd: “I just want to say thank you, for making it happen. Thank you.” He then put his right hand over his heart before extending his arm, elbow-straight, at a roughly 45-degree angle, with palm outstretched and facing down. He then turned around to face the audience behind the stage to repeat the gesture.
Many who saw it were quick to claim Musk was performing a Nazi salute. But the fact is that this straight-arm gesture was actually first popularised by the Italian fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, who ruled as a dictator in Italy between 1922 and 1943.
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ADVERTISEMENTMusk’s supporters on social media – especially on the Musk-owned X (formerly Twitter) – in turn pointed to Musk’s enthusiasm for ancient Rome. This was not a fascist gesture, they insisted, but a “Roman salute.” Several posted scenes from the 2005-07 TV series Rome, which depicts Roman salutes, as evidence in support of their claim.
Musk’s salute.But what, if anything, is the difference between a Roman and fascist salute?
No evidence from Rome
ADVERTISEMENTThose of us who research and teach Roman antiquity, as I do, will tell you there is no evidence that there was ever such a thing as a “Roman salute” in antiquity.
Martin Winkler, in his study of the history of the gesture, suggests that the Roman salute is a modern invention. For example, in one of the most complete iconographic monuments to Roman militarism and imperialism, Trajan’s Column (built in Rome in AD 113 with the spoils from the Dacian wars in what is now eastern Europe), there is not a single gesture akin to a Roman salute. Nor do we have any statues of Roman emperors or commanders performing the gesture.
The closest that we come to a Roman salute are representations of a palm raised, with elbow bent, in a sign of greeting – a little like a modern-day wave. None of this is remotely close to the straight-armed variety of the sort performed by Musk.
It was during the period of the French Revolution that the gesture was invented by revolutionary republicans who framed their politics as a revival of the Roman republic. The best example of this classicising invention is Jacques-Louis David’s 1784 painting, The Oath of the Horatii, which shows the three patriotic Horatii brothers giving an oath to defend the republic against an attack by the rival city of Alba in early Roman history.
real casino slots The Oath of the Horatii by Jacques-Louis David (1784 and 1785).Later examples include a 1921 sculpture by François-Léon Siccard in the Paris Panthéon. This sculpture, The National Convention, is especially interesting because the Roman salute still has its French republican meaning – although the sculpture postdates the salute’s adoption by Italian fascists by two years.
US schoolchildren performing the Bellamy salute to the flag of the United States, 1941.Following the French example, the salute was adopted by other republics – including, in certain contexts, the US, from the late 19th century up until the early 1940s.
In fact, when an early version of the current American pledge of allegiance was introduced in 1892 at the Chicago World Fair, its recitation was accompanied by the “Bellamy salute” – a similar form of the gesture.
The road to fascism
The Roman salute’s journey towards being inextricably associated with far-right politics began when a movement led by the Italian poet and nationalist Gabriele D’Annunzio occupied the then-Yugoslavian town of Rijeka in 1919. Rijeka, called Fiume in Italian, is a city on Croatia’s Adriatic coast that had a large Italian population at the time. Italian nationalists therefore saw it as rightfully Italian.
D’Annunzio, along with an army of Italian first world war veterans, occupied the city in 1919 to establish what they called the “Regency of Carnaro”, which lasted into the following year. During the short life of this city-state, D’Annunzio established a number of symbols and gestures that he claimed were derived from ancient Rome: the battle cry, purportedly of Roman origin, “alalà” and the “Roman salute”.
Gabriele d’Annunzio (in the centre with the cane) and some ‘legionaries’ of the Arditi (shock troops) corps of the Italian Army, at Fiume in 1919.Prior to the occupation of Rijeka, D’Annunzio had been deeply immersed in the worlds of ancient Greece and ancient Rome. He wrote numerous poems and plays inspired by Greco-Roman antiquity and had also purportedly written the screenplay for Cabiria – a 1914 silent film set in ancient Rome at the time of the Second Punic War (against Carthage which lasted from 218 to 201BC).
There are several scenes in which we see the salute that would reappear in Rijeka five years later. In the development of fascist symbolism, life imitated art.
Soon after this, when Benito Mussolini founded the Italian fascist movement in 1919, he adopted D’Annunzio’s salute.
Although the modernist and classicising elements within the fascist movement itself were in tension with each other, much of the classical symbolism of the Regency of Carnaro was adopted by Mussolini’s fascism.
Winkler suggests that D’Annunzio modelled himself on Julius Caesar, while Mussolini modelled himself on D’Annunzio. Mussolini’s fascism, which morphed into a political party, entered government in October 1922 after the now infamous March on Rome and by 1925 Mussolini had established himself as dictator of Italy.
Around the same time as the March on Rome, the burgeoning National Socialist German Workers’ party in Germany began to use the salute. By 1926 it was compulsory for members. Ever since, the Roman salute has been irreversibly associated with far-right nationalism and adopted by neo-Nazi movements around the globe. Few remember its 18th-century French revolutionary origins. Fewer still that it has nothing really to do with Rome.
Samuel Agbamu, Lecturer, University of Reading
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
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WASHINGTON – The United States on Friday reported a budget deficit of $1.8 trillion for the past year8k8, widening from 2023’s level on greater spending, including for interest on the public debt.
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