ch. 181.18 [Note] There was living, in those days, at Cures, a
Sabine city, a man of renowned justice and piety-Numa Pompilius. He was as conversant
as any one in that age could be with all divine and human law.
His master is given as Pythagoras of Samos, as tradition speaks
of no other. But this is erroneous, for it is generally agreed that it was more than a
century later, in the reign of Servius Tullius, that Pythagoras gathered round him crowds of
eager students, in the most distant part of Italy, in the neighbourhood of Metapontum,
Heraclea, and Crotona. Now, even if he had been contemporary with Numa, how could
his reputation have reached the Sabines? From what places, and in what common language
could he have induced any one to become his disciple? Who could have guaranteed the
safety of a solitary individual travelling through so many nations differing in speech and
character? I believe rather that Numa's virtues were the result of his native temperament and
self-training, moulded not so much by foreign influences as by the rigorous and austere
discipline of the ancient Sabines, which was the purest type of any that existed in the old
days.
When Numa's name was mentioned, though the Roman senators saw that the balance
of power would be on the side of the Sabines if the king were chosen from amongst them,
still no one ventured to propose a partisan of his own, or any senator, or citizen in
preference to him. Accordingly they all to a man decreed that the crown should be offered
to Numa Pompilius. He was invited to Rome, and following the precedent set by Romulus,
when he obtained his crown through the augury which sanctioned the founding of the City,
Numa ordered that in his case also the gods should be consulted. He was solemnly
conducted by an augur, who was afterwards honoured by being made a State functionary
for life, to the Citadel, and took his seat on a stone facing south. The augur seated himself
on his left hand, with his head covered, and holding in his right hand a curved staff without
any knots, which they called a lituus. After surveying the
prospect over the City and surrounding country, he offered prayers and marked out the
heavenly regions by an imaginary line from east to west; the southern he defined as the
right hand, the northern as the left hand. He then fixed upon an object, as far as he
could see, as a corresponding mark, and then transferring the lituus to his left hand, he laid
his right upon Numa's head and offered this prayer: Father Jupiter, if it be heaven's will
that this Numa Pompilius, whose head I hold, should be king of Rome, do thou signify it
to us by sure signs within those boundaries which I have traced. Then he described in the
usual formula the augury which he desired should be sent.
They were sent, and Numa being by them manifested to be king, came down from
the templum. [Note]
