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In matters of private law we have already witnessed the presence of religion in marriage, adoption, testament, and the transmission of the sacra. Its authority may be further illustrated by the formularies of civil procedure. Here the form of words was all-important, and in the early Republic all binding formulae, whether for oaths that were to be effectual, for vows or for consecration, were known only to the pontiffs. The solemn forms of law (legis actiones) issued from the same authority, and in one of their most frequent manifestations, the sacramentum, the procedure was distinctly religious.[222] But who could say whether the king, when he gave the prescribed form of words for an action, acted as a religious or a civil head, as the representative of fas or jus? Here we are on the borderland between the two.

(iii.) Nations know no common jus, and fas is the sole support of international law. Each people is protected by its own divine guardians; hence a war of two nations is a contest between their gods, and a treaty between two peoples a compact between their respective divinities. But each nation is to some extent under the protection of the other’s gods. Jupiter of Rome is powerless if the war commenced by Rome is unjust, and will punish his own people if they have stained his honour by violating a treaty. Even though there is no belief in community of guardianship, the rights of other peoples are still conceived to be under the protection of the Roman gods.