FEZIALI. — They constituted in Rome a priestly sodality of Latin origin, composed of twenty members, who recognized Jupiter as their patron and were the custodians of sacred norms relating to treaties of alliance and declarations of war (Cicero, *De leg.*, 2, 9, 21). Their duty was to negotiate before an alliance or war; to conclude peace treaties and to oversee their observance, invoking the deity as witness.
The *F.* had a ritual formulary, known in part through Polybius (3, 25), Livy (1, 24; 9, 5), Gellius (16, 4), and Dionysius of Halicarnassus (2, 72), for demanding satisfaction; for reclaiming from the enemy what had been wrongfully taken; for declaring war by hurling into enemy territory an iron-tipped spear or one of *sanguine* wood burned at the tip; and for sealing an alliance by the sacrifice of a pig slaughtered with a stone knife taken from the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, invoking Jupiter to strike in the same way either the Roman people, according to Livy, or the *F.*, according to Polybius, should they be the first to violate the concluded agreements.
The mission of the *F.* was composed of the *pater patratus*, who spoke and took the oath on behalf of the Roman people, and the *verbenarius*, the member who carried a branch of the apotropaic verbena, plucked from the Capitoline citadel, with which both touched their foreheads to ward off evil influences. Upon reaching enemy territory, the two envoys presented their demands, allowing a suitable time for a response; if this were negative, the final decision was left to the Roman people. When the boundaries of the State expanded, these ceremonies took place in the *Campus Hostilius*, adjacent to the temple of Bellona.
Varro (*De l. lat.*, 5, 36) states that by his time the ceremonial of the *F.* had fallen into disuse. Under Augustus it was revived, Augustus himself enrolled as a member of the sodality, and in 32 B.C. he declared war on Cleopatra according to the ritual of the *F.*