The literature speaks of fifteen flamines: three major ones (maiores) and twelve minor ones (minores). Several authors, such as Vanggaard (1988, pp. 105ff) and Domenico Fasciano and Pierre Séguin (1993, pp. 22–23), have challenged the traditional thesis that the flamines were the specific priests of a certain deity. Fasciano and Séguin point out that the term flamen was applied to the flamen of the Arvals (flamen Arvalium) and to the priests of the thirty curiae into which archaic Rome was divided (flamines curiales), suggesting that the twelve flamines minores represented, in some way, certain sectors of the population, while the three flamines maiores represented the people as a whole, as the common sacrifices to the goddess Fides (a symbol of Rome's "faith"), mentioned by Livy (1.21.4), would illustrate. Such a thesis would also be supported by the common invocation in the conclusion of a treaty by the college of the fetiales (Pol. 3.25.6) and in the formula of the devotio, the oath taken by a Roman general vowing his life to the gods of the underworld (Livy 8.9).
The differences between the flamines maiores (instituted by King Numa) and the flamines minores would be due, according to the traditional interpretation (after Georg Wissowa), to the various levels of importance of the gods each flamen served.
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