Laudator Temporis Acti

Ronald Syme, "Greeks Invading the Roman Government," in his Roman Papers, IV (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 1-20 (at 2):

Under the rule of the imperial Republic, the Greek lands had endured manifold disasters and tribulation, to mention only the constant drain of wealth to Italy. The matter can be illustrated by brief recourse to the balance of trade, to what are called 'invisible exports'. Italy sent out governors and soldiers, financiers and tax-gatherers, and Italy drew benefit in return, with enhanced prosperity (though not for all classes of the population). Those exports, be it added, were all too visible throughout the Eastern countries: legionaries, rapacious bankers, and the governor parading in the purple mantle of war, preceded by lictors who bore axes on their rods. The earliest Greek term for the mandatory who carries the imperium is 'a six-axe man' (ἑξαπέλεκυς). To the imperial people, by contrast, the emblems of power convey beauty as well as terror: in the phrase of the poet Lucretius, 'pulchros fasces saevasque secures'.

ἑξαπέλεκυς first occurs in Polybius (cf. Latin sexfascalis). The quotation from Lucretius comes from De Rerum Natura 5.1234.

Nowadays "fascist" is overused and practically meaningless. For the sake of variety at least, can we use "six-axe man" instead?