Roman Salute - Early Roman Sources and Images

Early Roman Sources and Images

The modern gesture consists of stiffly extending the right arm frontally and raising it roughly 135 degrees from the body’s vertical axis, with the palm of the hand facing down and the fingers stretched out and touching each other. According to common perceptions, this salute was based on an ancient Roman custom. However, this description is unknown in Roman literature and is never mentioned by ancient historians of Rome. Not a single Roman work of art, be it sculpture, coinage, or painting, displays a salute of this kind. The gesture of the raised right arm or hand in Roman and other ancient cultures that does exist in surviving literature and art generally had a significantly different function and is never identical with the modern straight-arm salute.

The right hand (Lat. dextera, dextra; Gr. δεξιά) was commonly used in antiquity as a symbol of pledging trust, friendship or loyalty. For example, Cicero reported that Octavian pledged an oath to Julius Caesar while outstretching his right arm:

"Although that youth is powerful and has told Antony off nicely: yet, after all, we must wait to see the end." But what a speech! He swore his oath with the words: "so may I achieve the honours of my father!", and at the same time he stretched out his right in the direction of his statue. —

Sculptures commemorating military victories such as those on the Arch of Titus, the Arch of Constantine, or on the Column of Trajan are the best known examples from art. However these monuments do not display a single clear image of the Roman salute. For example, three such scenes have been analyzed on Trajan's Column. On plate 99 (LXII, Scenes LXXXIV-LXXXV), six onlookers have their hand raised to Trajan, half extended straight, half bent at the elbow. On the ones with straight arms, only one palm is open but held vertically. The fingers of the three with bent arms are pointed downward. On Plate 167 (CII, Scene CXLI), three Dacians extend their right arms toward the emperor, their open hands held vertically and their fingers spread. None of the Romans are returning their gesture. On plates 122–123(LXXIV-LXXVI, Scenes CI-CII), the emperor on horseback is greeted by a unit of legionaries. None of the 15 legionaries is raising his entire arm. An officer facing Trajan has his arm close to his body, the lower arm raised, his index finger pointing up, and the other fingers closed. Behind him, two right hands are raised with fingers spread wide. Trajan himself holds his upper right hand close to his body, extending only the lower arm.

The images closest in appearance to a raised arm salute are scenes in Roman sculpture and coins which show an adlocutio, acclamatio, adventus, or profectio. These are occasions when a high-ranking official, such as a general or the Emperor, addresses individuals or a group, oftentimes soldiers. Unlike modern custom, in which both the leader and the people he addresses raise their arms, most of these scenes show only the senior official raising his hand. Occasionally it is a sign of greeting or benevolence, but usually it is used as an indication of power. An opposite depiction is the salutatio of a diogmites, a military police officer, who raises his right arm to greet his commander during his adventus on a relief from 2nd-century Ephesus.

An example of a salutational gesture of imperial power can be seen in the statue of Augustus of Prima Porta which follows certain guidelines set out by oratory scholars of his day. In Rhetorica ad Herennium Cicero states that the orator "will control himself in the entire frame of his body and in the manly angle of his flanks, with the extension of the arm in the impassioned moments of speech, and by drawing in the arm in relaxed moods". Quintilian states in his Institutio Oratoria:

Experts do not permit the hand to be raised above the level of the eyes or lowered beneath the breast; to such a degree is this true that it is considered a fault to direct the hand above the head or lower it to the lower part of the belly. It may be extended to the left within the limits of the shoulder, but beyond that it is not fitting. —