fetial

noun

1. (Ancient-Rome, historical)A member of the Roman college of priests who acted as representatives in disputes with foreign nations.

   “Nicomachus, as explained in the next line, was already known to the Elean priests or fetials, or whatever we are to call them, as a guest-friend.”

   “[P]erhaps the shadowy fetials were never actually an independent priesthood but were senatorial priests assigned diplomatic functions. If fetials were originally senators, this would explain the parallel fetial and senatorial function in "international relations" and account for the continuity between fetials and later senatorial legates. Of the twenty patrician fetials, only four were customarily chosen to serve in an embassy.”

   “According to authors of the late Republic, the fetials supervised Roman adherence to the iura belli, the laws of war. How, then, should we interpret the silence with respect to the fetials of Polybius, the central concern of whose history was Roman imperialism, but who mentions the fetials not even once?”

adj

1. (not-comparable)Of or relating to a fetial (member of the Roman college of priests who acted as representatives in disputes with foreign nations); (by extension) ambassadorial, heraldic.

   “[P]erhaps the shadowy fetials were never actually an independent priesthood but were senatorial priests assigned diplomatic functions. If fetials were originally senators, this would explain the parallel fetial and senatorial function in "international relations" and account for the continuity between fetials and later senatorial legates.”

2. (not-comparable)Concerned with declarations of war and treaties of peace.

   “The institution of a college of heralds and the fecial law, were proofs of a people considerably advanced in the cultivation of the law of nations as a science; and yet with what little attention they were accustomed to listen to the voice of justice and humanity, […]”

   “With the Fetial Law we are only imperfectly acquainted, but it seems to have been simply a law peculiar to the Romans, and regulating their conduct towards foreigners, and not properly an international law common to other nations, and determining on general principles their respective rights and duties.”

   “Religion played a central role in the making and application of fetial law. Thus, according to Frank, fetial law was based upon “the oath of good faith that was spoken upon the making of the treaties as well as the oath of innocence taken when war was declared”.”

   “It is interesting that centuries later Servius, in his commentary on the Aeneid, located in this same conflict a change in the fetial ritual for declaring war, whereby a piece of fictive enemy land was created in the Circus Flaminius (near the temple of Bellona), into which the fetiales (fetial priests) could throw their spears.”