449 Fetialis religio. Una riflessione su religione e diritto nell’esperienza romana. Giovanni Turelli Abstract. ― 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 conceptu- ally separate yet and these two aspects merged together. The outcomes are interesting because, from a different viewpoint, they confirm the absolute 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 ‘or- thopraxis’ than to the orthodoxy, highly ‘political’. Ius fetiale procedures seem to pre- sent, at least partly, the features of the Roman religion and, therefore, they confirm the thesis formulated 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 investi- gates 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, es- sentially for its acquiescence to Roman imperialism, and the ritual forms as useless and worthless frills. Keywords: ius fetiale – fetial law – religio – international Roman law. Sommario. 1. Introduzione. ― 2. ‘Religio’: cenni. ― 3. La fetialis religio e la cogenza dei rituali arcaici. ― 4. Interpretatio fetialis. ― 5. Conclusioni. 1. Introduzione. ― La scelta di approfondire la tematica del rapporto tra diritto romano e religione, focalizzando l’attenzione sul profilo ritua- le – e, più precisamente, sulla ‘cogenza’ del rito – offre, anche a chi si occupi di ius fetiale 1 , un interessante spunto per riflettere su alcuni do- cumenti sacerdotali e su alcune fonti a esso pertinenti. 1 La bibliografia in materia è molto vasta. Per un inquadramento generale, si vedano: F.K. CONRAD, De Fecialibus et iure feciali populi Romani [1734], in Scripta minora (a cura di