Plutarch, Romulus
Bernadotte Perrin, Ed.

26. This was the last war waged by Romulus. Afterwards, like many, nay, like almost all men who have been lifted by great and unexpected strokes of good fortune to power and dignity, even he was emboldened by his achievements to take on a haughtier hearing to renounce his popular ways, and to change to the ways of a monarch, which were made hateful and vexatious first by the state which he assumed. [2] For he dressed in a scarlet tunic, and wore over it a toga bordered with purple, and sat on a recumbent throne when he gave audience. And he had always about him some young men called Celeres, from their swiftness in doing service.¹ Others, too, went before him with staves, keeping off the populace, and they were girt with thongs, with which to bind at once those whom he ordered to be bound.

To bind, in the Latin language, was formerly ‘ligare,’ though now it is ‘alligare’; whence the wand-bearers are called ‘lictores,’ and the wands themselves ‘bacula,’ from the use, in the time of Romulus, of ‘bakteriai,’ which is the Greek word for staves. ² But it is likely that the ‘c’ in the word ‘lictores,’ as now used, has been added, and that the word was formerly ‘litores,’ which is the Greek ‘leitourgoi,’ meaning public servants. For the Greeks still call a public hall ‘leiton,’ and the people ‘laos.’ ³