“Feciales [were] … priests among the Romans, Etruscans, and other ancient nations of Italy, who acted as heralds of peace and war. Their persons were sacred from injury when engaged on any mission to a hostile state, as the persons of ambassadors, and messengers, under a flag of truce, are inviolate in the present time. Their duties in some few particulars resembled those of the heralds of the Middle Ages. The Roman feciales … formed a kind of college of heralds, instituted by Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, about 710 B.C.” Beeton’s Illustrated Dictionary of Religion, Philosophy, Politics, and Law 240 (ca. 1880).
fetiales
fetiales (fee-shee-ay-leez), n. pl. Roman law. The order of priests whose duties concerned international relations and treaties, including the declaration of war and peace. — Also spelled feciales.
