'Fetialis religio'. Una riflessione su religione e diritto nell’esperienza romana

The study focuses on the intertwine between religion and law in Rome from the perspective of the ius fetiale, a system of rules influenced by the traces of the period during which the categories of ‘juridic’ and ‘religious’ were not conceptually separate yet and these two aspects merged together. The out-comes are interesting because, from a different viewpoint, they confirm the ab-solute discrepancy between the present idea of religion and the Roman one. The ‘religion at Rome’ – according to the fortunate expression of John Scheid – is far removed from our idea of religion: Roman religion is completely public, strongly ritualistic, cultic, binding more to the ‘orthopraxis’ than to the ortho-doxy, highly ‘political’. Ius fetiale procedures seem to present, at least partly, the features of the Roman religion and, therefore, they confirm the thesis for-mulated by Scheid and, before, by Dumézil. This work takes its cue from two sources that define the ius fetiale as religio (Cic. rep. 2.17.31, Liv. 1.32.5) and in-vestigates the meaning of ‘religion’ from this distinctive perspective. Then the study looks at some religious aspects of the chief forms (Liv. 1.24.7-9; 1.32.6-7, 10). Meanwhile, setting rightly the meaning of religion allows both a revaluation of some priestly documents concerning changes of the fetial declaration of war (Liv. 31.8.3; 36.3.7-12) and also an observation about scholars who consider the ius fetiale as propaganda, essentially for its acquiescence to Roman imperialism, and the rit¬ual forms as useless and worthless frills.