Rituals of War. The fetiales and Augustus’ legitimisation of the civil conflict.

In numerous discussions about the civil war between Octavian and Antony, it is often remarked how Antony’s figure was constantly ‘deromanized’ in the portrait the sources made out of him. The purpose was to present the conflict as a war against an eastern foreigner rather than against a fellow citizen. For this scope, Antony was often accused of treason, debauchery, drunkenness, effeminacy and tyranny, so that he was made “less Roman” in the eyes of the public opinion. The role religion had in this ‘deromanization’ process is very interesting and yet not enough explored by modern scholarship. In this paper, I will thus analyse the rituals that sealed the transformation of the conflict with Antony from a civil war to a bellum iustum against a foreign enemy. These were the rites and formulas of the priests fetiales, who were in charge of opening and closing conflicts. Special attention will be paid to the use Augustus made of these rituals during the civil war. The ultimate goal is to understand how ancient these rituals were, on one hand, and whether Augustus modified their religious/cultural meaning in accordance with his propaganda, on the other. Ultimately, two conclusions will be drawn. Firstly, that the ritual performed by the fetiales were not invented in the Augustan era, but actually have a long tradition in Roman history. Secondly, that Augustus revived and used them for propagandistic purposes.