Doing Justice to Others 33hurl the spear into the enemy’s territory, thereby offi cially inaugurating the
hostilities. Livy rec ords the fi rst use of this procedure as taking place around
625 bc, against the neighboring city of Latium.
It must not be thought that this fetial procedure went very far toward in-
volving a conception of justice in war making. For one thing, there are no
rec ords of a request for war being turned down by the fetials. It may easily
be suspected that the whole pro cess was a mere ritual rather than any rea-
soned debate about the lawfulness of going to war. Wars were apparently
regarded as being just simply on the basis of the Roman demand having
been refused— without undue concern over the legitimacy of that demand
according to some general principle of justice. It will also be observed that
the enemy side played no part what ever in the process— save to receive the
ultimatum, which they were expected to refuse. In the course of time, the
fetial procedure fell into disuse, as Rome’s wars began to be waged against
faraway states, so that the fetial’s journey to the frontier became infeasible.
Th e fetial pro cess, however, did incorporate elements of just-war thought
in its requirement that redress be demanded for some kind of substantive
wrong on the part of the enemy- to- be. Th is refl ected a general Roman opin-
ion that, when war was resorted to, there had to be some plausible, objective
justifi cation. Polybius, the Greek historian of the second century bc, reports
that the Romans habitually “paid great attention” to ensuring that their
stated reasons for going to war “would appeal to foreign nations.” But he
was well aware, too, that the public explanations were sometimes mere pre-
texts for what were actually acts of policy. In such cases, formal justifi ca-
tions (of greater or lesser credibility) were seldom diffi cult to fi nd. Self-
defense claims were common. Other wrongs, or alleged wrongs, included
mistreatment of envoys, destruction of sacred places, refusal of extradition,
off enses against allied powers, and breaches of treaties (such as defections
from an alliance).
A striking example of the lengths to which Romans would go to ensure at
least the appearance of justice in war making occurred in 196 bc, when
Rome sought to take military action against the Boeotian League in Greece.
Th e Roman statesman and general Titus Quinctius Flamininus accused the
league of complicity in attacks against Roman soldiers in Boeotia. In their
defense, offi cials of the league maintained that these acts had been committed
by private bandits without offi cial support. Nevertheless, Flamininus de-