Status Updates From El sacramento del lenguaje:...

Rereading this in the wake of Agamben's 'Karman', and it's more interesting and decisive than I originally took it to be, I think.

(the proximity between the magical formula and the oath is attested by the verbhorkizo, to evoke, to exorcize: horkizo se to hagion onoma [I evoke or exorcize the holy name], with the accusative of the divine name exactly as in the oath); the utterance of the name immediately actualizes the correspondence between words and things. Oath and exorcism are the two faces of the "evocation"of being.

Fides thus becomes a goddess, for whom a temple on Capitoline Hill is constructed around 250; but, just as in the case of Deus Fidius, of whom it is disputed whether he is in origin distinct from Jove and who, like Mitra, was a sort of 'personified contract,' here religion does not precede the law but rather follows it.