While in Oxford we have not been doing that much sight-seeing touristy stuff. That is partly because I am using this time to hang out with my family and not exactly trying to fill every moment of every day. On Sunday we decided to go into Oxford and take a look at the Ashmolean Museum, one of the best museums in the UK. As we walked through the University section of town we decided to drop into the Sheldonian Theatre and take a look around. It is an amazing facility with great history, I don't want to focus to much on the building but rather on one caption written on a door in an out of the way location. The caption described the history of the image to the right.
"The original symbol of fascism, in Italy under Benito Mussolini, was the fasces. This is an ancient Roman symbol of power carried by lictors in front of magistrates; a bundle of sticks featuring an axe, indicating the power over life and death. Before the Italian fascists adopted the fasces, the symbol had been used by Italian political organizations of various political ideologies (ranging from socialist to nationalist), called Fascio ("leagues") as a symbol of strength through unity. Today, the symbol continues to appear on the seal of the United States Senate, the emblem on the back of the Mercury dime in the United States, the coat of arms of France, the wall of the debating chamber of the United States House of Representatives, the coat of arms of the Swiss Canton of St.Gallen and the emblem of the Knights of Columbus. "Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist_symbolismIt is crazy how you can learn something like this from walking into a three hundred year old theater in downtown Oxford. Symbols from our Roman past pop up all over the place in our modern politics.
All is Great in the Lord