The issue was brought to the site’s attention when debate arose about a SPQR flag flown outside a student rental house in Athens, Ohio late last year. While today the abbreviation is used rather innocuously in most instances, recent reports have shown that a growing number of white supremacist groups have begun to adopt the ancient acronym to symbolize their movement - and use it in a militaristic mode starkly different from the ways in which the Romans actually applied it.Ī July 2018 post on Pharos, a website committed to exposing the modern appropriation of classical texts and imagery by hate groups, addressed the manipulation of SPQR by white nationalist groups in the United States and consulted classical scholars about the history of the phrase. In antiquity, it was a shorthand means of signifying the entirety of the Roman state by referencing its two component parts: Rome’s Senate and her people. Upon the triumphal arches, the altars, and the coins of Rome, SPQR stood for Senatus Populusque Romanus (the Senate and the Roman people). The shield is now on display in the museum in Arles ( image by Carole Raddato via Flickr and used by permission). The central inscription notes its award by the “Senatus / Populusque Romanus” (Senate and Roman People) as a means of legitimizing the unprecedented honor using the language of the Republic. This is an ancient marble copy of a shield called the clipeus virtutis awarded to Augustus in 27 BCE and hung in the Senate House in Rome.
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