[62] Why, among those called Fetiales, or, as we should say in Greek, peace-makers or treaty-bringers, was he who was called pater patratus considered the chief? The pater patratus [145] is a man whose father is still alive and who has children; even now he possesses a certain preferment and confidence, for the praetors entrust to him any wards whose beauty and youth require a careful and discreet guardianship.
Is it because there attaches to these men respect for their children and reverence for their fathers?
Or does the name suggest the reason? For patratus means, as it were, “completed” or “perfected,” since he to whose lot it has fallen to become a father while he still has a father is more perfect than other men.
Or should the man who presides over oaths and treaties of peace be, in the words of Homer,[146] one “looking before and after”? Such a man above all others would be he that has a son to plan for and a father to plan with.