The Roman salute , also known as the Fascist salute , is a gesture in which the right arm is fully extended, facing forward, with palm down and fingers touching. In some versions, the arm is raised upward at an angle; in others, it is held out parallel to the ground. In contemporary times, the former is commonly considered a symbol of fascism.
According to an apocryphal legend, the fascist gesture was based on a customary greeting which was claimed to be used in ancient Rome. Originating from Jacques-Louis David 's painting The Oath of the Horatii , the gesture quickly developed a historically inaccurate association with Roman republican and imperial culture. The gesture and its identification with Roman culture were further developed in other neoclassic artworks. In the United States , a similar salute for the Pledge of Allegiance known as the Bellamy salute was created by Francis Bellamy in The gesture was further elaborated upon in popular culture during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in plays and films that portrayed the salute as an ancient Roman custom.
These included the Italian film Cabiria whose intertitles were written by the nationalist poet Gabriele d'Annunzio. In , d'Annunzio adopted the cinematographically depicted salute as a neo-imperial ritual when he led an occupation of Fiume.
Through d'Annunzio's influence, the gesture soon became part of the rising Italian Fascist movement's symbolic repertoire. In , the salute was gradually adopted by the Italian Fascist regime. It was then adopted as the Nazi salute and made compulsory within the Nazi Party in and gained national prominence in the German state when the Nazis took power in It was also adopted by other fascist, far right , and ultranationalist movements. Legal restrictions on its use in Italy are more nuanced and use there has generated controversy.
The modern gesture consists of stiffly extending the right arm frontally and raising it roughly 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 a pseudo-historical legend, this salute was based on an ancient Roman custom. However, this description is not found in Roman literature and is never mentioned by ancient Roman historians.
