Anyolduser , 5 months ago

Not sure why you got down voted for asking an honest question.

There was a single influential painting from the 1800’s depicting three Romans doing the gesture. This lodged in the minds of some people in the early 20th century as the way ancient Romans saluted despite the fact that there wasn’t any historical evidence for this, just a painting portraying it.

The situation was a bit like the whole “people eat X number of spiders in their sleep” thing where an innocent falsehood spread like wildfire and was accepted as fact. The idea that Romans saluted that way is still floating around and would probably be more prevalent if the Nazis hadn’t adopted the gesture.