Who were the arvales brothers ?

The arvals therefore came from Rome's old, or even very old, families. Moreover, during the civil wars that had shaken Rome since Caesar's assassination, they had been divided between supporters and opponents of Octavian/Augustus. In re-founding this brotherhood, Octavian set out to gather around him a number of representatives of the old Roman nobility, friends as well as former enemies, who had more or less quickly reconciled with him during the civil wars, to whom he added other senators of more recent nobility who had also been among his friends or enemies during the civil conflict. Now, since a myth from the ^1st century BC presented the arvals as the brothers of Romulus, and the brotherhood was restored during the period when Octavian was tempted to call himself Romulus, as the refounder of Rome (in other words, between 34 and 28 BC), the hypothesis was that, through this cult, Octavian was presenting the Romans with the old aristocracy, now reconciled. The sacrifice to Dea Dia lasted three days, the first and last of which included a sacrifice celebrated in the urban residence of the brotherhood's annual president. It was for this reason that, fifteen years later, I chose to give the title, inspired by Visconti, "Romulus and his brothers" to the summary that explained the brotherhood's activities. This cult allowed the inhabitants and elite of Rome to see these former friends or enemies gathered in the home of one of them, sometimes even in that of the emperor, to celebrate a common cult. I thought I saw confirmation of this hypothesis in the Greek translation of the title "arvale brother" in Augustus' Highest Deeds, by ἀδελφὀς ἀρουᾶλις, which designates a blood brother and not a confrere in a cultic association. In my view, this little mistranslation was deliberate. It indicated the way in which the authorities intended the title of priesthood to be understood. The chancellery of the governor of Galatia, from which this translation comes, no doubt chose it on the basis of contemporary translations of Augustus' titulary. But it's not impossible that the translator, who knew little about the titulatures of Roman priests, made other mistakes. Later inscriptions translate frater arualis into Greek as φράτηρ ἀρουᾶλις, as early as AD 44. In any case, the recruitment itself could suggest this meaning, insofar as most of the arvals were relatives, and sometimes even close relatives.