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Why do they call the rod-bearers ‘lictors’?1
Is it because these officers used both to bind unruly
persons and also to follow in the train of Romulus
with straps in their bosoms? Most Romans use
alligare for the verb ‘to bind,’ but purists, when
they converse, say ligare.2
Or is the c but a recent insertion, and were they
formerly called litores, that is, a class of public
servants? The fact that even to this day the word
‘public’ is expressed by leitos in many of the Greek
laws has escaped the attention of hardly anyone.
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1936. 4.
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