LICODIA EUBEA

licodia eubea, a town of sicily in the province of catania, 4 m. w. of vizzini, which is 39 m. s.w. of catania by rail. pop. (1901) 7033. the name eubea was given to the place in 1872 owing to a false identification with the greek city of euboea, a colony of leontini, founded probably early in the 6th century b.c. and taken by gelon. the town occupies the site of an unknown sicel city, the cemeteries of which have been explored. a few vases of the first period were found, but practically all the tombs explored in 1898 belonged to the fourth period (700-500 b.c.) and show the gradual process of hellenization among the sicels. see _romische mitteilungen_, 1898, 305 seq.; _notizie degli scavi_, 1902, 219. (t. as.) lictors (_lictores_), in roman antiquities, a class of the attendants (_apparitores_) upon certain roman and provincial magistrates.[1] as an institution (supposed by some to have been borrowed from etruria) they went back to the regal period and continued to exist till imperial times. the majority of the city lictors were freedmen; they formed a corporation divided into decuries, from which the lictors of the magistrates in office were drawn; provincial officials had the nomination of their own. in rome they wore the toga, perhaps girded up; on a campaign and at the celebration of a triumph, the red military cloak (_sagulum_); at funerals, black. as representatives of magistrates who possessed the _imperium_, they carried the fasces and axes in front of them (see fasces). they were exempt from military service; received a fixed salary; theoretically they were nominated for a year, but really for life. they were the constant attendants, both in and out of the house, of the magistrate to whom they were attached. they walked before him in indian file, cleared a passage for him (_summovere_) through the crowd, and saw that he was received with the marks of respect due to his rank. they stood by him when he took his seat on the tribunal; mounted guard before his house, against the wall of which they stood the fasces; summoned offenders before him, seized, bound and scourged them, and (in earlier times) carried out the death sentence. it should be noted that directly a magistrate entered an allied, independent state, he was obliged to dispense with his lictors. the king had twelve lictors; each of the consuls (immediately after their institution) twelve, subsequently limited to the monthly officiating consul, although caesar appears to have restored the original arrangement; the dictator, as representing both consuls, twenty-four; the emperors twelve, until the time of domitian, who had twenty-four. the flamen dialis, each of the vestals, the _magister-vicorum_ (overseer of the sections into which the city was divided) were also accompanied by lictors. these lictors were probably supplied from the _lictores curiatii_, thirty in number, whose functions were specially religious, one of them being in attendance on the pontifex maximus. they originally summoned the comitia curiata, and when its meetings became merely a formality, acted as the representatives of that assembly. lictors were also assigned to private individuals at the celebration of funeral games, and to the aediles at the games provided by them and the theatrical representations under their supervision. for the fullest account of the lictors, see mommsen, _romisches staatsrecht_, i. 355, 374 (3rd ed., 1887). footnote: [1] the greek equivalents of _lictor_ are [greek: rabdouchos, rabdophoros, rabdonomos] (rod-bearer); the latin word is variously derived from: (a) _ligare_, to bind or arrest a criminal; (b) _licere_, to summon, as convoking assemblies or haling offenders before the magistrate; (c) _licium_, the girdle with which (according to some) their toga was held up; (d) plutarch (_quaestiones romanae_, 67), assuming an older form [greek: litor], suggests an identification with [greek: leitourgos], one who performs a public office.