Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the original language
There is also a fierce dispute about the times of King Numa, when he lived, even though from the beginning the royal lines are thought to be traced with precision. But a certain Claudius, in a work called Refutation of Chronologies (for such is roughly the title of the book), insists that the ancient records perished in the calamities the city suffered when the Gauls sacked it, and that the records now in circulation were falsely compiled by men currying favor with certain families, forcing them into the leading clans and most distinguished houses to which they did not truly belong.
As it is said, then, that Numa became a companion of Pythagoras, some hold altogether that Numa had no share in Greek education at all -- as though it were possible either for a man to become sufficient in virtue by nature alone, or for the king to have received his education from some barbarian better than Pythagoras -- while others say that Pythagoras lived later, some five generations removed from the time of Numa,
and that it was the Spartan Pythagoras -- who won the footrace at the sixteenth Olympiad, in whose third year Numa took up the kingship -- who wandered through Italy and fell in with Numa and helped him arrange the constitution, whence not a few Laconian practices were mixed in with Roman customs by Pythagoras's teaching; but otherwise Numa was Sabine by birth, and the Sabines claim to be colonists of the Lacedaemonians.
Now it is difficult to establish the dates with precision, especially those reckoned from the Olympic victors, whose record they say Hippias of Elis published late, starting from nothing necessary for certainty. But the things we have received as worth telling about Numa we shall set forth, taking a fitting beginning.
Rome was now in its thirty-seventh year of being inhabited under the kingship of Romulus. On the fifth day of the month -- the day they now call the Nones Caprotinae -- Romulus was offering a public sacrifice before the city near the place called the Goat's Marsh, and the senate was present along with most of the people.
Suddenly a great disturbance arose in the air, and a cloud settled upon the earth together with wind and storm; the rest of the crowd, struck with panic, fled and scattered, while Romulus vanished, and neither he himself nor any part of his dead body was ever found. A grave suspicion fell upon the patricians, and a rumor spread among the people against them, that, long resentful of being ruled by a king and wishing to transfer power into their own hands, they had done away with the king -- for indeed he already seemed to be dealing with them more harshly and more like a monarch.
But they allayed this suspicion by raising Romulus to the honors of a god, on the grounds that he had not died but had passed to a better lot; and Proculus, a distinguished man, swore an oath that he had seen Romulus being carried up into the heavens with his weapons, and had heard a voice bidding that he be called Quirinus.
Another disturbance and factional strife seized the city over who was to be declared king next, since the newcomers had not yet fully merged with the original body of citizens, and the populace still surged with much unrest within itself, and the patricians were held in suspicion of each other because of their differences; still, all agreed that they should be ruled by a king, but they quarreled and were divided not merely over a man but over a people -- which of the two should furnish the ruler. For those who had been with Romulus
as the first settlers of the city, found it intolerable that the Sabines, who had merely been received into the city and its territory, should force their way into ruling over those who had admitted them for that purpose. Yet the Sabines had a fair argument of their own: since their king Tatius had died, they had not risen against Romulus but had let him rule alone, and now they thought it fair that the ruler should come from their side in turn; for they had not attached themselves to their betters from a position of inferiority, but by joining had strengthened them in numbers and had raised them to the dignity of a city alongside themselves. Over these matters, then, they contended.
So that the strife should not, amid the anarchy, produce confusion while the government hung in suspense, the patricians -- who numbered a hundred and fifty -- arranged that each in turn, adorned with the royal insignia, should perform the usual offerings to the gods and handle public business, six hours by night and six by day.
For this division of the times into equal shares seemed to the rulers themselves to preserve fairness among them, and to the people it seemed to remove envy from the exercise of power, seeing the same private citizen become king and then, within the same day and night, a private citizen again. This form of rule the Romans call an interregnum.
But although they seemed to conduct affairs in this way so constitutionally and inoffensively, they fell under suspicion and uproar, as though they were shifting the state into an oligarchy and managing the government among themselves, unwilling to be ruled by a king. Out of this the two factions came to an agreement with each other, that one faction should choose the king from the other:
for in this way, above all, the present rivalry would be brought to an end, and the man chosen would be equally disposed toward both sides -- cherishing the one faction as having chosen him, and being well-disposed to the other through kinship. And when the choice was granted first to the Romans over the Sabines, they decided it was better to designate a Sabine themselves than to allow the Sabines to hand over a Roman of their own choosing.
So, deliberating among themselves, they designated Numa Pompilius, a Sabine, a man who had not been among those who settled in Rome, but who was so well known to all for his virtue that when his name was proposed, the Sabines accepted it even more eagerly than those who had chosen him. Having announced their decision to the people, then, they sent envoys to the man jointly, the foremost men from both sides, to go and entreat him to come and take up the kingship.
Now Numa came from Cures, a city of note among the Sabines, and it was from this town that the Romans, once the Sabines had been mingled among them, took the name Quirites for themselves; he was the son of Pomponius, a man of good repute, and the youngest of four brothers. He had been born, by a certain divine fortune, on the very day on which Romulus and his companions founded Rome -- that is, the eleventh day before the Kalends of May --
and being by nature well tempered in character toward every virtue, he made himself gentler still through education and hardship and philosophy, ridding himself not only of the passions the soul is reproached for, but also of that violence and greed so admired among barbarians, holding that true courage lay in the reasoned restraint of one's desires within oneself,
and for this reason he banished from his own household all luxury and extravagance alike, while offering himself to every citizen and stranger as a blameless judge and counselor; in his own leisure time he devoted himself to nothing that served pleasure or profit, but rather to the worship of the gods and to contemplation, through reason, of their nature and power, so that he had a great name and reputation, such that even Tatius, who had shared the kingship at Rome with Romulus, having but one daughter, Tatia, made Numa his son-in-law,
yet he was not so elated by the marriage as to move to his father-in-law's house, but remained in Sabine territory, attending his own aged father, while Tatia too chose the quiet life of her husband as a private citizen over the honor and glory to be had at Rome for her father's sake. She is said to have died in the thirteenth year after the marriage.
Numa, forsaking his time spent in the city, wished for the most part to live in the countryside and wander alone, making his dwelling in groves sacred to the gods and in holy meadows and deserted places. From this, more than anything, arose the story about the goddess -- that Numa had not left the life among men out of any distress or wandering of soul,
but rather, having tasted a more solemn kind of intercourse and been deemed worthy of divine marriage, he consorted and lived together with the divine spirit Egeria, who loved him, and so became a happy man and one instructed in things divine. That this resembles many of the very old myths -- those which the Phrygians tell about Attis, the Bithynians about Herodotus, the Arcadians about Endymion, and others about other men reputed happy and beloved of the gods -- is not unclear.
And perhaps it makes sense that the god -- not a lover of horses or of birds, but a lover of mankind -- should wish to keep company with men of outstanding goodness, and should not disdain or scorn the companionship of a pious and self-controlled man. But whether there is any communion and favor between a god or spirit and a human body and its bloom of youth -- that is already a hard thing to be persuaded of.
And yet the Egyptians seem not unpersuasively to distinguish that while it is not impossible for a woman to be approached by the breath of a god and to conceive certain beginnings of generation, there is for a man no union or bodily intercourse with a god. But they fail to see that whatever is mingled with returns the same kind of communion to that with which it mingles. Still, it would be fitting that there be a friendship of a god toward a man, and that the love spoken of in this connection, growing into a concern for character and virtue, should exist.
And those do not err who tell in myth that Phorbas and Hyacinthus and Admetus were beloved of Apollo, nor again those who tell it of Hippolytus of Sicyon, of whom they say that as often as he happened to sail across to Cirrha from Sicyon, the Pythia, as though the god perceived it and rejoiced, would utter this oracle: 'and again the dear head of Hippolytus goes down to the sea.'
They tell in myth that Pan became a lover of Pindar and his songs. Some divine favor is likewise said to have honored Archilochus and Hesiod once they had died, on account of the Muses. And there is a story that Asclepius was a guest of Sophocles even while he lived, preserving many proofs of it to this day, and that when he died, another god, as they say, provided for his burial.
Is it worthwhile, then, granting these things in these cases, to disbelieve that the divine power visited Zaleucus and Minos and Zoroaster and Numa and Lycurgus as they governed kingdoms and set states in order toward the same end -- or is it likely that with these men, gods in earnest consorted with them for the teaching and counsel of what is best, but with poets and lyric singers they merely toy, if indeed they do so at all, in playful humor?
But if anyone says otherwise, then, in the words of Bacchylides, 'broad is the road.' For neither account is base -- the one they tell about Lycurgus and Numa and other such men, that in mastering unruly and hard-to-please multitudes and introducing great innovations into their constitutions, they laid claim to a reputation as sent from god, a claim that was salutary for the very people toward whom they contrived it.
But when Numa had already completed his fortieth year, the envoys came from Rome urging him to accept the kingship. The speeches were made by Proclus and Velesus, of whom the people had earlier been expected to choose one or the other as king -- Proclus favored by the followers of Romulus, Velesus especially by those of Tatius. These men, then, spoke briefly, supposing that the meeting itself would be welcome to Numa;
but it proved, it seems, no small task, but one requiring much speech and entreaty, to persuade and change the mind of a man who had lived his life in quiet and peace, and to turn it toward the rule of a city that had come into being and grown, in a sense, through war. So he spoke, with his father present and Marcius, one of his kinsmen, saying: 'Every change in human life is fraught with danger; but for a man who lacks nothing sufficient and finds nothing to blame in his present circumstances, nothing but folly could move and dislodge him from his accustomed ways -- to which, even if nothing else recommended them,'
'they are superior to the uncertain by their very certainty; but neither are the affairs of kingship free from uncertainty, if one judges by the sufferings of Romulus -- he himself incurred the wicked reputation of plotting against his co-ruler Tatius, and brought upon his peers the wicked reputation of having done away with him, even though these same men now sing of Romulus as though he were divinely fathered, and speak of some miraculous rearing and preservation of him as a helpless infant. But for me, both my birth is mortal, and my nurture and education have been at the hands of men, as you are not unaware:'
'and the qualities praised in the character of a man far from wishing to be king are these -- much quiet, and time spent in unhurried discourse, and that formidable love of peace, bred and nurtured alongside it, and of unwarlike pursuits, and of men who come together for the honor of the gods and in mutual friendliness, while otherwise tending their fields or their flocks on their own account.'
'But for you, Romans, Romulus has perhaps left behind many unwanted wars, which the city, standing against them, needs an experienced and vigorous king to face; and much habituation and eagerness have arisen in the people through their good fortune, and it has not escaped anyone's notice that they wish to grow and to master others -- so that it would be laughable for me, a man who worships the gods and honors justice, and who teaches men to hate violence and war, to lead a city that needs a general more than a king.'
When the man had thus, with such words, tried to absolve himself of the kingship, the Romans made every effort, entreating and beseeching him not to cast them back again into partisan strife and internal war, for there was no one else both sides would accept; and his father and Marcius, once the envoys had withdrawn, pressed him privately and tried to persuade Numa to accept the great and divine gift.
'And if you yourself have no need of wealth, being self-sufficient, nor have you coveted the glory of rule and power, holding a greater glory through virtue -- but if you consider kingship a service to god, who indeed raises up and does not allow such great justice as is in you to lie idle and unused, then do not flee nor run from rule, which is for a wise man a field for fair and great deeds, in which there are also magnificent services of the gods, and men most easily and swiftly turn toward reverence when they are guided by'
who prevailed, these same men had also embraced Tatius, a foreigner, as their leader, and they honor Romulus's memory with divine rites. Who knows whether even a victorious people has its fill of war, and, glutted with triumphs and spoils, longs for a gentle leader and a companion of justice, for good government and peace? But if they are altogether unrestrained and mad for war, is it not better to turn their impulse elsewhere, holding the reins in hand, and thereby forge, between the fatherland and the entire Sabine nation, ties of mutual affection and friendship with a city both thriving and mighty?" To these arguments there was added,
as is said, favorable signs and the eagerness and zeal of the townspeople, who, once word of the embassy reached them, begged him to go and take up the kingship, in a merging and joint partnership of the citizens.
So, since it had been decided, he sacrificed to the gods and made his way toward Rome. He was greeted there by the senate and the populace with a remarkable outpouring of affection; fitting acclamations of the women arose, and sacrifices at the shrines, and joy of all, as though the city were not receiving a king but a kingdom itself. And when they had taken their stand in the forum, Spurius Vettius, who at that time held the office of interrex, put the question to the citizens, and all cast their vote; but when the royal insignia were brought to him, he ordered them to hold off and said that he still needed the god to confirm the kingship for him.
Taking with him seers and priests, he went up to the Capitoline, called by the Romans of that era the Tarpeian hill. There the leading seer turned him, veiled, to face south, while he himself stood behind him, and, laying his right hand on his head, offered a prayer, and looked all around for what might be shown forth by the gods in birds or in signs, turning his gaze everywhere,
and an incredible silence held the forum, full of such a multitude, as they waited in suspense and hung upon what was to come, until favorable and auspicious birds appeared and gave leave. Then, taking up the royal robe, Numa came down from the height to the multitude, and then there were shouts and greetings, as of men receiving one most pious and most beloved of the gods.
Taking up the government, he first disbanded the company of three hundred men whom Romulus had continually kept near him as bodyguards, styled Celeres, meaning "the swift ones"; for he did not think it right either to distrust those who trusted him or to rule over men who distrusted him. Second, to the priests already existing of Zeus and Ares he added a third, that of Romulus, whom he named the Flamen Quirinalis.
They called even the earlier priests Flamens, from the felt caps they wore around their heads, being, as they relate, certain "pilamenae," since at that time Greek names were mixed in with the Latin even more than now. And indeed the cloaks the priests wore, which Juba says are called "laenae," he says are the same as "chlainai," and that the freeborn boy who assisted the priest of Zeus was called Camillus, just as some of the Greeks likewise called Hermes Camillus from his service.
Having so governed the state to the goodwill and favor of the people, Numa at once undertook to make the city, like iron, softer and more just out of its hard and warlike condition. For that city was, in the exact sense, what Plato calls an inflamed city, having been formed from the outset by a certain daring and reckless boldness of the boldest and most warlike men thrust together there from every side,
and nourished and increased in its power by many campaigns and continuous wars, and, like things driven into the ground that become more firmly fixed by being shaken, seeming to grow strong through dangers — so then, thinking it no small or trivial task to handle and remold toward peace a people so restless and unsettled, he called in the help that comes from the gods,
for the most part by sacrifices and processions and dances, which he himself instituted and established, having along with their solemnity a pleasant and humane enjoyment of pastime, thereby winning over and taming the spirited and war-loving temper; and sometimes too, by announcing certain fears from the god and strange apparitions of spirits and unfriendly voices, he enslaved and made humble their minds through superstitious fear.
From these things especially arose the account of the man's wisdom and education, that he had been a companion of Pythagoras. For it was a great part, as of Pythagoras's philosophy, so of Numa's statesmanship, to observe reverence toward the divine and to be occupied with it. And it is said that he also assumed the outward bearing and appearance of the same cast of mind as Pythagoras.
For indeed that man is said to have tamed an eagle, arresting it with certain cries and bringing it down as it flew overhead, and to have displayed a golden thigh as he walked through the Olympic festival; and they report other marvelous devices and deeds of his, on account of which Timon of Phlius also wrote: "and Pythagoras, inclining toward juggler's opinions, a hunter after men, a companion of solemn talk—"
For Numa's story was a love and secret intercourse with some goddess or mountain nymph, as has been said, and shared communion with the Muses. Most of his prophecies he credited to the Muses, and it was he who instructed the Romans in the special reverence of one particular Muse, giving her the name Tacita, meaning “she who says nothing,” or the mute goddess — which seems to be a recollection and honoring of the Pythagorean discipline of silence.
The legislation regarding cult images too is altogether akin to the doctrines of Pythagoras. For he supposed that the First Principle was neither perceptible by sense nor subject to passion, but invisible and uncreated and knowable only by the mind; and Numa likewise forbade the Romans to conceive of god in human or animal form. Nor was there among them formerly either a painted or a molded image of god,
but across a span of a hundred and seventy years the Romans continued building temples and founding sacred shrines without ever fashioning any image with a shape, since they held it neither pious to liken the better to the worse, nor possible to touch god otherwise than by thought. Their manner of sacrifice too is altogether close to the Pythagorean rite; for most of their sacrifices were bloodless, made of barley meal and libation and the cheapest of offerings.
Apart from these, those who would connect the man with the man contend also with other outside proofs. One of these is that the Romans enrolled Pythagoras as a citizen, as Epicharmus the comic poet has related in a certain discourse written to Antenor — an old writer and one who had shared in the Pythagorean discipline; another, that when four sons were born to King Numa, he named one Mamercus after the son of Pythagoras.
From him they say the house of the Aemilii too, once mingled with the patricians, took its name, the king thus giving an affectionate diminutive to the man's charm and grace in speech ("haimylia"); and we ourselves have heard many at Rome relate that once, when an oracle instructed the Romans to erect statues of the most sagacious and the most courageous man among the Greeks, two bronze images went up in the forum as a result, one representing Alcibiades and the other Pythagoras. These matters, however, admit of much dispute, and to pursue them at greater length, and to insist upon them, belongs to a rather boyish love of contention.
To Numa also they attribute the arrangement and establishment of the chief priests whom they call Pontifices, and they say that he himself was the first of these. Some say the Pontifices were so called because they serve the gods, who are powerful and lords of all things — for "powerful" is called "potens" by the Romans;
others say the name arose by way of exception with regard to "the possible," since the lawgiver ordered the priests to perform such sacred rites as were possible, and not to be blamed if there were some greater hindrance. But most, and especially those who favor the more amusing of the derivations, hold that the men were called nothing else than "bridge-builders," from the rites performed about the bridge, which are most sacred and most ancient — for the Latins call the bridge "pons."
They hold, moreover, that its upkeep and repair, like that of any other immovable and ancestral sacred thing, belonged to the priests. For it is not lawful, but accursed, in the judgment of the Romans, to dismantle the wooden bridge; and it is said that it was, according to a certain oracle, fastened together entirely without iron, wholly of wood, while the stone bridge was built many years later under the quaestorship of Aemilius.
Nevertheless they say that the wooden bridge is left over from Numa's own time, having been completed under the reign of Marcius, Numa's grandson. And the greatest of the Pontifices has been allotted the rank of an expounder and a prophet, or rather of a hierophant, overseeing not only what is done publicly, but also watching those who sacrifice privately, and preventing them from transgressing the established customs, and teaching whatever anyone needs for honoring the gods or for propitiation.
He was also overseer of the sacred virgins, whom they call Vestals. For it is to Numa that they credit not only the dedication of the Vestal virgins but also, more broadly, the care and reverence shown toward the undying fire which these women guard, whether because they thought the substance of fire pure and incorruptible and fit to be entrusted to unstained and undefiled bodies, or because they associated its barrenness and unfruitfulness with virginity. Since indeed, wherever in Greece there is an unquenchable fire, as at Delphi and at Athens, it is not virgins but women past marriage who have the charge of it; and if by some chance it should go out,
just as at Athens, it is said, under the tyranny of Aristion the sacred lamp went dark, and at Delphi, when the sanctuary was consumed by fire set by the Persians, and during the Mithridatic wars and the civil war of the Romans the fire vanished along with the altar — they say one must not kindle it again from another fire, but must make a new and fresh one, lighting a pure and undefiled flame from the sun.
They kindle it chiefly by means of concave mirrors, which are constructed hollowed out from the side of an isosceles right-angled triangle, and converge from their circumference to a single center. When, then, such a mirror is placed opposite the sun, so that the rays, reflected back from every side, gather together and interweave about the center, it separates the air itself, which grows rarefied, and quickly kindles whatever light and dry material is applied, by the resistance, the ray receiving a fiery body and force.
Some, then, suppose that nothing is guarded by the sacred virgins except that unquenchable fire; others say that there are certain sacred objects hidden and unseen by others, concerning which whatever it is lawful both to inquire and to tell has been written in the Life of Camillus.
First, then, the account holds that Gegania and Verenia received consecration at Numa's hands, followed next by Canuleia and Tarpeia; later, when Servius added two others, the number was kept at this total down to these times. The king established for the sacred virgins a period of purity of thirty years, during the first ten of which they learn what they must do, in the middle ten they perform what they have learned, and in the third ten they themselves teach others.
Then, after this period, it is permitted to any who wish to take up marriage as well and to turn to another life, once released from the sacred service; but few, it is said, have embraced this freedom, nor did good things befall those who did embrace it, but living the rest of their life in regret and dejection, they drove the others into superstitious fear, so that they persevere and remain virgins even to old age and death.
He gave them great honors, among which is the right to make a will while their father still lives, and to conduct their other affairs without a guardian, just as women who have borne three children. They are attended by lictors as they go forth; and if they should by chance meet someone being led to execution, he is not put to death, provided the virgin swears that the encounter was involuntary and by chance and not deliberately arranged. And whoever passes beneath the litter
as they carry her is put to death. As punishment for other offenses the virgins are whipped, the chief Pontifex sometimes chastising the offender even while stripped, behind a curtain drawn in a darkened place; but the one who has forfeited her virginity through disgrace is entombed while still living, close by the gate known as Collina, where a certain earthen mound stretches some distance within the city,
called in the Latin tongue an "agger." There an underground chamber is built, not large, having a stairway leading down from above. In it are placed a couch spread with bedding, a lamp burning, and small first-fruits of the necessities of life — such as bread, water in a vessel, milk, oil — as if to absolve themselves of the guilt of destroying by starvation a body consecrated to the greatest rites.
The woman being punished is herself placed in a litter, covered over on the outside and bound about with straps, so that not even her voice can be heard, and is carried through the forum; all withdraw in silence and escort her without a word, in a kind of dreadful dejection, nor is there any other spectacle more horrifying, nor does the city pass any other day more gloomy than that one.
When the litter has been brought to the place, the attendants loose the bonds, and the chief of the priests, having offered certain secret prayers and stretched forth his hands to the gods before the necessity is carried out, leads her forth, veiled, and sets her upon the ladder leading down into the chamber below. Then he himself, along with the remaining priests, turns his back; once she has descended, the ladder is withdrawn and the chamber concealed, much earth being heaped upon it from above, so that the place becomes level with the rest of the mound. Thus are those punished who have abandoned their sacred virginity.
Numa is also said to have surrounded the shrine of Vesta in a circle as a guard for the unquenchable fire, imitating not the shape of the earth, on the supposition that this is Vesta, but that of the universe as a whole, at the center of which the Pythagoreans believe fire to be established, and this they call Hestia and the Monad;
The earth, they held, is neither motionless nor set at the middle of the revolving heavens, but is suspended in a circle around the fire, belonging to none of the most honored or foremost portions of the universe. And they say that Plato too, when he had grown old, came to think along these lines about the earth—that it occupies a different region, while the middle and most sovereign place belongs to something else more excellent.
The Pontiffs also explain the ancestral customs concerning burials to those who need them, since Numa taught that none of these things should be regarded as pollution, but that the gods below are to be worshipped with the rites established for them, as receiving what is most sovereign among our concerns—above all the goddess called Libitina, who oversees the sacred rites for the dying, whether she is Persephone or, as those Romans most versed in such lore would have it, Aphrodite instead—not badly attaching the affairs of birth and death to the power of a single goddess.
He himself also fixed periods of mourning according to age and time: a child younger than three should not be mourned at all, nor one older than that for more months than the years he had lived, up to ten years, and beyond that age no period at all, but the longest period of mourning should be ten months, the same span for which widowed wives of the dead remain unmarried; and a woman who remarried before this term was to sacrifice a pregnant cow, by his legislation.
Since Numa established many other priesthoods as well, I shall mention two more—that of the Salii and that of the Fetiales—which especially display the man's piety. The Fetiales were a kind of guardians of peace, and, as it seems to me, took their name from this very function; they used to put an end to quarrels by speech, not allowing war to be waged until every hope of a just settlement had been cut off.
For the Greeks call it "peace" (eirene) when men resolve their differences by speech rather than force, and the Roman Fetiales would often go to those doing wrong and try themselves to persuade them to act reasonably; and if they proved unreasonable, the Fetiales called the gods to witness, invoking many terrible curses upon themselves and upon their country if they were not pursuing a just cause, and only then declared war upon them.
If the Fetiales forbade it or did not consent, it was lawful neither for a soldier nor for the king of the Romans to take up arms; rather, the ruler had first to receive the opening of the war from them as a just cause, and only then deliberate about expediency. It is said that that disaster with the Celts befell the city because these priests had been treated unlawfully.
For the barbarians happened to be besieging the people of Clusium, and Fabius Ambustus was sent as an envoy to their camp to negotiate a settlement on behalf of the besieged. Having received answers that were not reasonable, and thinking that his embassy had reached its end, he rashly took up arms before the eyes of the Clusians and called out, for a duel of one against one, whichever barbarian was boldest.
The battle went well for him, and having struck the man down he stripped his armor; but the Celts, recognizing him, sent a herald to Rome accusing Fabius of having broken the truce and acted treacherously, and of having brought war upon them without a formal declaration. At this the Fetiales made an attempt to induce the Senate to surrender the man to the Celts; but he took refuge with the people, and by making use of the eager support of the populace he evaded justice. Shortly afterward the Celts came upon Rome and sacked the whole city except the Capitol. But these events are set out more precisely in the Life of Camillus.
The priesthood of the Salii, it is said, came about for the reason now to be told. In the eighth year that Numa reigned, a plague spread across Italy and threw Rome into turmoil as well. While the people were in despair, the story goes that a bronze shield fell from the sky into the hands of Numa. Concerning it the king told a marvelous tale, which he said he had learned from Egeria and the Muses.
The weapon, he said, had descended for the city's deliverance, and it must be protected by having eleven other shields fashioned to resemble it in shape, size, and form, so that it would be impossible for a thief, because of the similarity, to lay hold of the one that fell from heaven. Furthermore, that spot and the meadows around it, where the Muses often came and spent time together, must be consecrated to them. And the spring that watered the place he declared should be made sacred water for the Vestal virgins, so that they might draw it daily to purify and sprinkle the shrine.
To these claims, they say, the plague itself bore witness, ceasing at once. When Numa set forth the shield and bade the craftsmen compete in matching it, all the others gave up, but Veturius Mamurius, one of the finest artisans, achieved such a likeness that he made all of them alike, so that not even Numa himself could any longer distinguish the original. Numa then appointed the priests of the Salii as guardians and attendants of these shields.
They got the name Salii not, as some tell it in legend, from a certain Salius of Samothrace or Mantinea who was supposedly the first to teach the dance in arms, but rather from the leaping motion of the dance itself (from 'salire'), which they perform while passing through the city on the occasions when they carry the sacred shields during March, dressed in purple tunics and cinched with wide bronze belts, bronze helmets on their heads, striking their weapons with short daggers.
The rest of the dance is a matter of footwork: they move delightfully, performing certain windings and changes in a rhythm that has both speed and density, combined with strength and lightness. The shields themselves they call "ancilia" because of their shape; for it is not a circle, nor does it, like a pelta, give a rounded circumference, but has the cut-out form of a spiral line, whose curving ends, bending and turning together with the density of the design, form
a hooked (ancylon) shape with one another, or from the elbow (ankon) about which they are turned—for so Juba says, in his eagerness to give the name a Greek derivation. But it could rather have taken its name first from the shield's descent from above, or from the healing of the sick, or from the ending of droughts, or further from the warding off of terrible things—in accordance with which the Athenians called the Dioscuri "Anakes," if indeed one must trace the name back to the Greek dialect.
As payment for that craftsmanship, they say, Mamurius received a certain remembrance in a song performed by the Salii together with the Pyrrhic dance. But others say that it is not Veturius Mamurius who is sung of, but "veterem memoriam," that is, "ancient memory."
When he had organized the priesthoods, Numa built near the shrine of Vesta the building called the Regia, a kind of royal residence; and he spent most of his time there performing sacred rites, or teaching the priests, or devoting himself in leisure to some contemplation of divine matters. He also had a second dwelling on the Quirinal, and its location is even now shown to visitors. In processions generally, and above all in those of the priests, heralds went ahead throughout the city bidding people be still and putting a stop to their work.
For just as, they say, the Pythagoreans forbade offering worship or prayer to the gods in a hurried, casual manner, but bade them go from home already prepared in mind for that very purpose, so too Numa thought that the citizens ought neither to hear nor to see anything of the divine carelessly and as a side matter, but, taking leisure from other concerns and directing their attention as to the greatest of undertakings—that concerning piety—should keep the streets clear for the sacred rites of noises and clatter and groaning and all such things that accompany necessary and menial labors. A trace of this practice is preserved even now: whenever a magistrate is occupied with the auspices or with sacrifices, they cry out "Hoc age"—the phrase means "attend to this"—turning and composing those who happen to be present.
Many of his other precepts, too, resembled those of the Pythagoreans. For just as the Pythagoreans advised not to sit on a grain-measure, not to stir a fire with a knife, not to look back when setting out on a journey, and to sacrifice odd numbers to the heavenly gods but even numbers to the gods below—concealing from the many the meaning of each of these—so too some of Numa's ancestral customs contain a hidden meaning, such as not to pour libations to the gods from unpruned vines, nor to sacrifice without barley meal, and to worship while turning oneself around, and to sit down after worshipping.
The first two of these seem to teach the cultivation of the earth, as being a part of piety; but the worshipper's act of turning about is said to represent, in miniature, the revolving motion of the cosmos. It would seem rather, however, that since the sacred buildings face east, the worshipper, having his back turned to the rising sun, turns himself around at that point and revolves toward the god, making a circle and joining together the completion of his prayer
through both directions—unless, by Zeus, this points to something like the Egyptian wheels, and the change of position teaches something similar: that nothing among human affairs stands still, but that however God turns and unrolls our life, it is fitting to accept and welcome it. As for sitting down after worshipping, they say it is an omen of firmness for one's prayers and of endurance for one's blessings. They also say that the pause is a way of marking a division between actions:
as though, having set an end to the former action, they sit down beside the gods, so that they may take up the beginning of another from them in turn. This too can agree with what has been said, since the lawgiver accustomed us not to make our approaches to the divine while occupied and hastily as though in passing, but whenever we have time and are at leisure.
From such training in matters divine the city had become so tame and so awed by Numa's power that it accepted stories whose strangeness resembled myths, and believed that nothing was incredible or beyond his power to accomplish.
It is said, at any rate, that once, having invited a good number of citizens to his table, he set before them plain vessels and a meal quite modest and common; but when they had begun to dine, he let drop the remark that the goddess who kept company with him was about to pay him a visit, and suddenly displayed the house filled with costly drinking-cups and the tables laden with all manner of delicacies and lavish provision.
But every strangeness is surpassed by what is recorded concerning his converse with Zeus. For the tale is told that on the Aventine hill—which at that time lay outside the city and was uninhabited, though it held plentiful springs and glens deep in shade—two spirits used to resort, Picus and Faunus, whom one might liken in other respects to a race of Satyrs or Pans, but who, by the power of drugs and by skill in dealing with divine sorcery, are said to wander about Italy practicing the same arts attributed by the Greeks to the Idaean Dactyls.
These, they say, Numa overpowered by mixing wine and honey into the spring from which they habitually drank. Once caught, they turned themselves into many shapes, shedding their own nature and putting forth strange and fearsome apparitions to the sight; but when they realized they were held fast in a strong and inescapable capture, they foretold many things to come, and taught him the rite of purification for thunderbolts, which is still performed to this day by means of onions, hairs, and pilchards.
Others say that it was not the spirits who suggested the purification, but that they, having worked their magic, brought Zeus down; and the god, angered at Numa, commanded that the purification be performed "with heads"—whereupon Numa, taking him up, said, "of onions?" and the god, again turning aside the harshness of the command, said, "of men," to which Numa asked, "with hairs?" and when Zeus answered, "of living things," Numa added, "of pilchards?"—having been taught to say these things by Egeria.
And the god departed, made gracious; and the place was called Ilicium from that event, and the purification is performed in this manner to this day. Now these mythical and absurd tales reveal the disposition toward the divine of the people of that time, which their custom had instilled in them. But Numa himself, they say, was so wholly bound to the divine by his hopes that once, when word came to him that enemies were approaching, he only smiled and said, "But I am sacrificing."
First, they say, he also established a shrine of Faith and of Terminus. Faith he made the greatest oath of the Romans, one which they continue to use to this day; Terminus would be a boundary-god, and both publicly and privately they sacrifice to him along the boundary-lines of their fields—now with living victims, but in ancient times the sacrifice was bloodless, Numa having reasoned as a philosopher that this god of boundaries, since he watches over peace and testifies to fair dealing, should be kept unstained by killing,
and it seems that this king was, on the whole, the one who fixed the boundaries of the territory, since Romulus had been unwilling to acknowledge, by any measurement of his own, the extent of what he had taken from others; for a boundary is, if observed, a bond upon one's power, but if not observed, a proof of injustice. Indeed the city did not have an abundant territory at the outset, but Romulus had acquired most of it by the spear;
and all of this Numa distributed among the poorer citizens, thereby removing poverty as a compulsion to injustice, and turning the people to farming, so that they might be civilized together with the land itself. For no other pursuit produces so keen and swift a love of peace as a life drawn from the earth, in which the fighting spirit's readiness to defend one's own remains and is present, while the part of it inclined toward injustice and greed is cut away.
For this reason Numa, having mixed farming into the citizens' lives as a kind of love-charm for peace, and valuing the craft more as a shaper of character than as a producer of wealth, divided the land into portions which he called "pagi" (districts), and over each he set overseers and patrolmen; sometimes he himself would inspect them, judging the characters of the citizens from their works, and would advance to honors and positions of trust those who worked well, while rebuking and reproaching the lazy and careless, thereby bringing them to their senses.
Among his other political measures, the distribution of the populace according to trades is especially admired. For since the city seemed, as has been said, to be composed of two peoples, yet remained divided and in no way willing to become one, nor to erase, as it were, its otherness and difference, but instead had constant clashes and rivalries between its two parts, he reasoned that just as bodies naturally hard to mix and stubborn are broken up and divided in order to be blended, coming together with one another more readily because of their smallness,
so he resolved to cut the whole populace into more numerous divisions, so that, by throwing them into other differences, he might make that first great division disappear, scattered among the smaller ones. The distribution was made according to trades: flute-players, goldsmiths, carpenters, dyers, shoemakers, leather-tanners, bronze-workers, potters; and the remaining trades he gathered together and made into a single guild composed of them all.
Having assigned to each group its own fellowship, gatherings, and honors to the gods proper to it, he was the first to remove from the city the practice of calling and considering some people Sabines and others Romans, some belonging to Tatius's people and others to Romulus's, so that in place of division there came about a mutual blending and harmony of everyone together.
Among his political measures is also praised his correction of the law that allowed fathers to sell their children, in which he excepted those who had married, provided the marriage had taken place with the father's approval and at his bidding; for he thought it a terrible thing that a woman married as a free person should live with a slave.
He also took up the study of the heavens, neither with full precision nor altogether without observation. For in the reign of Romulus the Romans used the months irrationally and without order, reckoning some at not even twenty days, others at thirty-five, and others at still more, having no notion of the irregularity that arises with respect to the moon and the sun, but adhering to a single fixed rule, namely that a year must total three hundred sixty days.
Numa, calculating that the discrepancy of the irregularity amounted to eleven days—since the lunar year has three hundred fifty-four days and the solar year three hundred sixty-five—doubled this eleven-day gap and, every second year, inserted an extra month right after February, one the Romans termed Mercedinus, twenty-two days long.
But this remedy of his for the irregularity was destined to require greater remedies still. He likewise rearranged the sequence of months: March, formerly first, he shifted to third place, and set January, eleventh under Romulus, in the leading position, while February, once twelfth and final, now stands second. Many say that these months, January and February, were added by Numa,
and that from the beginning only ten months were used for the year, as some barbarian peoples use three, and among the Greeks the Arcadians four, the Acarnanians six, while for the Egyptians the year was originally a single month, then four months, as they say. This is why, though they inhabit the youngest land, they seem to be the most ancient, and reckon an impossible multitude of years in their genealogies, since they count months as years.
That the Romans once counted only ten months in a year rather than twelve can be seen from what they call the final month: even today its name means 'tenth.' And that March was first is shown by the order: for they called the month after it the fifth, the next the sixth, and each of the others in like succession, since when January and February were set before March, it turned out that the month in question, though named fifth, was in fact counted seventh.
There was also good reason for March, consecrated to Ares, to be named first by Romulus, and for the second to be April, named for Aphrodite, in which women, garlanded with myrtle, sacrifice to the goddess and bathe on the calends. But some say that April is not named for Aphrodite, but, taking the word in its plain sense, that the month is called Aprilis because, as the height of spring is coming on, it opens up and uncovers the buds of plants—for this is what the word signifies.
Of the following months, they call May from Maia, since it is consecrated to Hermes, and June from Hera. But there are some who say these are named for age groups, elder and younger: for the elders among them are called maiores, and the younger iuniores; and each of the rest they named from its place in the order, as though counting, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth.
Then the fifth was named Julius, from Caesar who overcame Pompey; and the sixth was named Augustus, from the man who ruled second and was surnamed Augustus. The months following these Domitian incorporated into his own titles, but not for long; for when he was slain they resumed their own names, the seventh and the eighth, and only the last two have kept, as they had from the beginning, their names taken from their numerical order.
Of the months added or transposed by Numa, February would be, so to speak, a purificatory one; the word itself all but says so, and it is in this month that they carry out rites on behalf of the dead and hold the Lupercalia festival, a rite that in most of its features looks like a cleansing ceremony. January, the first month, is named from Janus. It seems to me that Numa removed March, which was named for Ares, from its position of primacy because he wished, in every respect, to give precedence to the civic power over the military.
For Janus, in very ancient times, whether a divine spirit or a king, is said to have changed his way of life from something savage and beastlike to one civilized and sociable. And for this reason they fashion him with two faces, as one who brought about, through his life, a change from one shape and disposition to another.
There is also a temple of his in Rome with two doors, which they call the Gate of War. It is customary for it to stand open whenever there is war, and to be closed when peace comes about—something that was difficult and rarely achieved, since the empire was always entangled in some war, defending itself, because of its greatness, against the barbarian peoples poured round about it on every side.
It was closed, however, under Augustus Caesar, after his defeat of Antony, and before that, in the consulship of Marcus Atilius and Titus Manlius, for a short time—but it was reopened at once when war broke out again. Yet during Numa's reign it was not observed open on even one day, staying shut without interruption across forty-three years: so completely was war banished, root and branch, on every side,
for not only was the Roman people made gentle and charmed by the justice and mildness of the king, but the cities round about, as though some breeze or wholesome wind blew from that source, took the beginning of a change, and a longing came over them all for good order and peace, and for tilling the earth and rearing children in quiet, and
for honoring the gods; and festivals, feasts, and, as people went fearlessly to one another and mingled, hospitalities and friendly exchanges held Italy fast, as though from the spring of Numa's wisdom the streams of what is good and just flowed out over all, and the calm that surrounded him spread abroad—so that they say even the exaggerations of the poets fall short of the condition of that time:
"On iron-bound shield-handles the works of tawny spiders": and, "Rust destroys the pointed spears and the double-edged swords, and no longer is there the din of bronze trumpets, nor is honey-sweet sleep robbed from the eyelids." For neither war nor faction nor any revolution in the state is recorded during the reign of Numa; nor indeed was there against that man himself any hatred or envy or plot or conspiracy of men arising from desire for the kingship,
but whether it was fear of the gods, who seemed to watch over the man, or reverence for his virtue, or some divine fortune that kept his life throughout that time untouched and pure of all wickedness, he furnished a clear example and proof of that saying of Plato's, which he himself, coming long afterward, ventured to utter concerning government—
that there is but one cessation and release from evils for mankind: that by some divine chance a philosophic mind and a kingly power should coincide in the same person, so as to make virtue master and superior to vice. "For blessed indeed is he," the truly wise man, "and blessed are those who hear the words that come from a wise man's mouth."
For perhaps there is no need at all of compulsion or threat toward the many; rather, seeing virtue itself set forth in a clear and shining example in the life of their ruler, they of their own accord become moderate and are shaped, in friendship and concord with him, toward a blameless and blessed life lived with justice and moderation—wherein lies the finest end of every form of government, and he is the most truly kingly of all who can bring about this life and this disposition in his subjects. These things, then, Numa evidently perceived better than anyone.
Concerning his children and his marriages the historians disagree. Some say that he took no wife other than Tatia, and became father of no child but a single daughter, Pompilia; others record, besides her, four sons of his—Pompo, Pinus, Calpus, and Mamercus—each of whom left behind a line of descent and an honored family.
The Pomponii, it is said, trace back to Pompo; the Pinarii to Pinus; the Calpurnii to Calpus; and the Mamercii to Mamercus, a family additionally given the surname Rex, meaning "kings," was also given. And there is a third group who accuse these families of currying favor and adding untrue lines of descent tracing back to Numa, and who say that Pompilia was not born of Tatia at all, but of another woman
—Lucretia, whom he married after he was already king. All, however, agree that Pompilia was married to Marcius. This Marcius was the son of that Marcius who had urged Numa to accept the kingship; for he had moved with him to Rome and had a seat in the senate with honor, and after Numa's death, entering into a contest with Hostilius over the kingship and being defeated, he starved himself to death. His son Marcius, having Pompilia as wife, remained in Rome and begot Marcius Ancus, who reigned after Tullus Hostilius.
This grandson, they say, Numa left five years old when he died, his end coming not swiftly or suddenly, but wasting away little by little through old age and a gentle illness, as Piso has recorded. He died not long after reaching the age of eighty.
The allied and friendly peoples made his life enviable even in his burial, coming together for the funeral with public offerings and garlands, while the patricians themselves lifted his bier, and the priests of the gods were present and escorted him, and the rest of the throng, women and children mixed in among them, followed along not as if attending the burial rites of an old man who had been king, but each mourner wailing and lamenting as though some cherished friend had been torn away while still in his prime,
They did not, however, give his body to the fire, since he himself, it is said, had forbidden it; instead, having made two stone coffins, they set them beneath the Janiculum, one containing his body, the other the sacred books which he himself had written, just as the Greek lawgivers wrote their tables of laws. Having, while still alive, taught the priests what was written and worked into them a full grasp and understanding of it all, he ordered that the books be buried with his body, on the ground that it was not right for such secrets to be guarded merely in lifeless writings.
For this same reason, they say, not even the Pythagoreans committed their teachings to writing, but instilled memory and instruction of them, unwritten, in those who were worthy. And indeed, when the treatment of the difficult and so-called ineffable methods in geometry was published to one who was unworthy, they said that the divine power showed its displeasure by pursuing, with some great and common calamity, the lawlessness and impiety that had occurred.
So one may readily forgive those who, on the strength of so many similarities, are eager to bring Numa together with Pythagoras in this same regard. The circle of Antias record that there were twelve sacred books, and twelve others of Greek philosophy, placed together in the coffin. When about four hundred years had passed, in the consulship of Publius Cornelius and Marcus Baebius, after heavy rains fell and an embankment was torn away, the flood forced the coffins out;
and when the lids fell off, the one was seen to be entirely empty, having not even a trace or remnant of the body, whereas in the second chest the documents turned up; these, according to the account, Petilius, praetor at the time, read through and carried before the senate, saying that he did not think it lawful or right for what was written to become known to the many; and so the books, having been carried to the Comitium, were burned.
Now with all men who are just and virtuous, a fuller measure of praise tends to come later, once they are gone, because envy fails to outlast them for long and in some instances perishes even sooner; yet what happened to the kings who succeeded him made his own reputation shine all the more. Of the five who ruled after him, the last was driven from power and lived out his old age in exile; and as for the remaining four, every single one met a death that was not natural: three fell victim to conspiracy and were killed, and Tullus Hostilius,
who reigned after Numa, having mocked and abused most, and above all, that reverence toward the divine, as sluggish and womanish, turned the citizens toward war, and did not himself hold fast to these youthful excesses, but, his mind changed by a harsh and manifold illness, fell into a superstitiousness in no way resembling the piety of Numa, and, they say, brought this same affliction all the more upon others, being himself consumed by thunderbolts.