Elon Musk’s supposed ‘Roman salute’ never existed

All the media and social networks in the world have collected the images of the greeting that Elon Musk made last Monday, the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration as president of the United States.

It could be argued that this is a camera angle, but the videos clearly capture the gesture, repeated twice, of placing one’s hand on one’s heart and extending one’s arm high. Media linked to Musk have argued that it was actually a Roman salute, not a Nazi salute. But was there ever a Roman greeting?

The debate over this gesture stems from the endless fascination that ancient Rome has provoked over the centuries. Donald Trump spoke in his speech of a new golden age, as if he were a revived Augustus. Elon Musk has admitted his passion for ancient Rome and, on numerous occasions, has justified his political ideas based on an erroneous view of this civilization, stating that low birth rates or barbarians caused the end of Rome. In fact, he has publicly maintained that he considers the US the New Rome.

Send silence to the Roman

However, the Roman salute is a mere historical invention of the 18th century. In ancient Rome, there was no analogous type of greeting, with the arm extended high.

Probably, the confusion comes from images like the Arringatore either The speakeran Etruscan statue dated to the beginning of the 1st century BC. and. c. which represents a local notable called Aulus Metellus.

But he is not making any salute, but instead extends his arm in a common gesture in Roman oratory that was used to indicate to the audience that the speaker was going to begin speaking and thus demand silence.

In fact, the rhetoric teacher Quintilian, who lived in the 1st century, pointed out that the arm did not have to be raised above the eyes or below the stomach. That is to say, it is a very stereotyped gesture and one that was taught to young apprentice speakers.

A second statue, the Augustus of Prima Portashows a representation of Emperor Augustus (27 BC-14), in which he may apparently be saluting (the hand is reconstructed, so it is conjecture).

However, it is a adlocutio or speech to the troops, in which the general extends his arm to address them, as a symbol of authority and to ask for silence. Let us not forget that microphones did not exist, so the emperors had to use only their voices to make themselves heard. The famous scene from the Sermon on the Mount of Brian’s life illustrates something very common: those who were located in the back heard practically nothing.

In this situation, gestures were important. We see a very similar scene on a coin of Emperor Nero (54-68), in which he addresses a group of soldiers, and in the equestrian statue of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180).

It should also be noted that there is not a single ancient literary source that mentions any type of greeting with an arm extended high.

Origins of a myth

The supposed “Roman greeting” is an invention of the painter Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) who began his career shortly before the start of the French Revolution, in the midst of neoclassicism, that is, an artistic moment inspired by ancient Rome, especially all linked to the first excavations in Pompeii and Herculaneum.

In his painting Oath of the Horatii (1784), David represents the three homonymous heroes with their arms extended in a supposed greeting as a symbol of union. The artist invented this greeting that, in fact, will appear in other of his paintings, such as the unfinished Ball Game Oath (1790-1794), in which it shows the French deputies of the third estate swearing not to secede until they have provided France with a constitution.

The history of the Roman salute has a second fundamental milestone in 1892. At that time the Pledge of Allegiance to the US flag was invented, accompanied by that same salute (known as greeting Bellamyby Francis Bellamy, the person who devised it in this context).

Outside of this context, this gesture was also popularized thanks to theater and cinema. A stage version of the novel premiered on Broadway in 1899. Ben-Hurwhich had tremendous success. Several photographs of the representation show the characters performing the Roman salute as devised by David.

The appropriation of the greeting

However, the determining moment in this process is the premiere of the Italian silent film Cabiria (1914), set in the Second Punic War. In it, both Romans and Carthaginians frequently use this type of greeting. We must highlight the participation of the poet and ideologist in it. Gabriele d’Annunzio (1863-1938), who wrote the titles and gave names to the characters.

The film, in fact, is a call to resurrect Italy’s role in the world and exalt its spirit of conquest. The aesthetic advocated by d’Annunzio, which includes the Roman salute, was taken as inspiration by the fascist leader Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), who already in 1923 imposed it in Italian schools to salute the flag. In Germany, the Nazi party imposed it internally in 1926, despite protests that it was a copy of the Italian fascist salute and therefore not sufficiently Germanic.

During World War II, the Bellamy salute became problematic in the US because, if the flag was not visible or left out of the image, the gesture was exactly the same as the Nazi and fascist salute. Therefore, in 1942 the US Congress changed the law to specify that the salute to the flag had to be performed with the hand on the heart.

The greeting disappeared from political life, but not from cinema. In fact we see it in almost all the Roman films of the second half of the 20th century: Quo Vadis (1951), Ben-Hur (1959), Spartacus (1960) and Cleopatra (1963), among others, as a way of representing Rome as a militaristic and authoritarian State. It is significant that this type of greeting does not appear in Gladiator (2000).

Whatever Elon Musk had in mind on Monday, that gesture was not a Roman salute. Bellamy salute, fascist salute, Nazi salute… they are all based on an erroneous interpretation of what Roman Antiquity was and, especially the last two, have very clear political connotations. Although we have seen it a thousand times in the cinema associated with the Romans, it is a modern and historically incorrect gesture.

Cristina Rosillo López is a professor of Ancient History at the Pablo de Olavide University

This article was originally published in The Conversation. You can read it here.