The Development of the Treaty-Making Rituals of the Romans

In contrast to certain recent work, which supposes that the fetial priests were always responsible for the swearing of the oaths made upon the striking of a treaty and that the rituals they performed went unchanged for centuries, this paper argues that the treaty-making rituals of the Romans changed and developed, and that the ritual which the fetial priests performed may not have been devised until as late as the third century BC.