BOOK I. The god The care of Numa for the men of low estate. The gate of Janus. Quirinus, whom he called flamines, that is, kindlers of fire, because they were to kindle the fires for the sacrifices. And for the service of Vesta he chose pure virgins, who had to perform the service in the temple and to feed the holy flame on the altar of Vesta, the common hearth of the city. And in order to discover the will of the gods he instituted the office of augurs, and instructed them in the science of the flight of birds. And he appointed many more priests and servants of the altars, and prescribed to each what he should do. And that they might all know what was right in the service of the gods, and not from ignorance employ the wrong prayers, or at the sacrifices and other services leave out or neglect something whereby they might incur the anger of the gods and suffer great punishment, Numa wrote all his statutes in a book. This he handed over to Numa Marcius, and made him chief pontifex, that is, overseer and watcher over the service of the gods, and recommended him to pursue the study of divine things, and to guard the purity of the religion which he had founded. Numa took care also of the peaceful arts, that the people might live by the produce of their labour, and not think of robbing from others. For this purpose he divided the land which Romulus had conquered among the citizens, and bade them cultivate it; and he consecrated the stones which marked the boundaries of the fields, and erected an altar on the Capitoline hill to Terminus, the god of boundaries. In the same manner he took care of all artizans in the town who possessed no land. He divided them into guilds, and set masters over them according to each kind of trade, and set apart for them markets, sacrifices, and festivals; and in order that truth and good faith might be practised in common intercourse, and that promises might be kept as sacred as oaths, he founded the service of the goddess Fides, or Faith, and built a temple to her on the Capitol. While Numa was thus occupied with works of peace, the weapons of war lay idle, and the neighbouring people were afraid of disturbing the rest of this righteous king. So the gate of Janus remained closed, for it was the custom among the Romans to open it only in time of war. III. sedness of Thus the reign of Numa was a time of peace and of The bleshappiness, and the gods testified their pleasure in the Numa. pious king and his people; for they guarded the country from all plagues and sicknesses, and they sent health and good harvests, and blessing and prosperity upon all that the people undertook. Now, when Numa had become old and weak, he died calmly, without illness and without pain, and the Romans mourned for him as for a father, and buried him on the Janiculus beyond the Tiber, on that side which lies towards the west. Critical Examination of the Legend of Numa Pompilius. Numa Pompilius is evidently the complement of Romulus. Numa the As Romulus was the founder of the state and of political ment of compleand military order, so the legend regards Numa as the Romulus. founder of the national religion.' His uneventful reign of thirty-nine or forty-three years was entirely devoted to the organisation of public worship. All the neighbours lived in peace with the righteous king. It was a golden age, in which the gate of Janus remained closed, and the sword rested in its sheath. Only the arts of peace were practised. Agriculture and trade prospered. Right and justice ruled. The gods themselves held intercourse with the pious priest-king and revealed to him their divine wisdom. 1 The name of Numa is significant, and denotes an organiser or lawgiver. The root of the word is the same as in numerus, nummus, vóμos (see Schwegler, Röm. Gesch., i. 552, Anm. 1). The word Pompilius has been derived from pompa, a religious procession. Perhaps the apparently so simple and yet so mysterious word pontifex is to be derived from the same root, which occurs also in the Umbrian language. The transition from pompa into ponta would be analogous to that of Téμre into Tévre. Pontifex would accordingly mean an arranger of processions; and by no means a bridgemaker. There were pontifices at Præneste and other places, where no bridges had to be built (Servius, ad Virg. En., vii. 678). It is clear how suitable the name Numa Pompilius was for the founder of pontifical law. The first pontifex appointed by Numa was likewise called Numa. BOOK I. Numa and Pythagoras. The Roman religion. In this description fiction is so evident that serious discussion is almost out of place. The supernatural and the miraculous do not challenge more scepticism than the all-prevailing peace in an age of incessant wars. That which appears most of all historical, the intercourse of Numa with Pythagoras, was invented when it was not known that Pythagoras is said to have lived nearly two hundred years after the assumed age of Numa. The idea that the religion of the Romans was created by one individual lawgiver who could be named, is even less tenable than that the political institutions and the civil order were produced in the brain of the founder of the state. The religion of a people is not adventitious or a chance attribute. It is one of the essential elements which determine national individuality and national existence. It is impossible to imagine a people without religious conceptions and practices. It can be shown that the Roman religion is older in its principal features than the Roman state, and older even than the Roman people, as we find it in Rome and in Latium. It is essentially Italian, common to all the branches of the Sabine stock,' as are also the elements of the Roman language. It cannot, therefore, have originated in Rome. The Romans brought it with them into the valley of the Tiber, and there was no period of time when the Roman state existed without the religious forms which were ascribed to Numa. Accordingly the legend of Romulus mentions not only some of the principal deities, as Jupiter, Janus, Faunus, and Vesta, but also the auguries,2 the most important part of the Roman state religion. Other parts of the Roman ceremonial law were ascribed to other kings, as for instance that which regulated the intercourse with neighbouring people, and especially prescribed the form of the declaration of war. As this did not seem to suit the 1 Ambrosch, Studien, i. 73, Anm. 158-60, and p. 193, Anm. 170. Schwegler, Röm. Gesch., i. 554. 2 Romulus himself is called the best augur, and the augural staff (lituus) which he had used, was preserved as a relic. III. peace-loving Numa, the Roman legend-makers did not CHAP. hesitate to ascribe it to King Tullus' or Ancus,' of whom there were at least wars to relate. books of As the personality of Numa resolves itself into that of The lawan ideal priest-king, the founder of the sacred rites and Numa. laws, whom the pontifices, the keepers and guardians of these laws, regarded as their legislator, it follows that the law books, which in later times contained the precepts and were attributed to Numa, cannot have been genuine. Writings of this kind belong, it is true, to the oldest products of civilisation; nevertheless, it is certain that what passed in Rome as writings of Numa Pompilius, did not originate even in the regal period. It is tolerably certain that at that time the art of writing was not yet practised in Rome, but was brought from Southern Italy shortly before the downfall of the monarchy. In the uncritical ages of the republic, nobody hesitated to ascribe to the kings any documents which seemed to be very ancient. Even an audacious forgery belonging to the year 181 B.C. seems to have been looked upon as a genuine document. In that year a stone coffin, containing Greek and Latin writings of Numa on religious and philosophical subjects, was discovered in a field at the foot of the Janiculus. But their contents appeared to the Prætor Q. Petillius to be so much at variance with the prevailing religious views, and with the whole system of the state religion, that, with the consent of the senate, he ordered the books to be publicly burned. They were evidently considered as real, in spite of their being written on paper, which was not used for writing for many centuries after the alleged time of Numa, and although the paper looked quite new and fresh. Nobody seems to have been surprised that in Numa's time-long before Greek prose was written in Greece-Romans should have written Greek fluently. Nor did it apparently seem surprising that Numa's Latin was so smooth and easy to be read, although the priests 1 Livy, i. 24. 2 Ancus is a second Numa. See below chap. iv. ' Livy, xl. 29. For the detail see Schwegler, Röm. Gesch., i. 564. VOL. I. D BOOK I. themselves were not able to understand the hymns ascribed to the same Numa. The pretended discovery was evidently a scheme for the purpose of religious innovation, but the whole of the Roman people took for granted, with childlike simplicity, the authenticity of the writings of Numa. This occurrence in the year 181 B.C., 500 years after Numa, shows what care is needed in the examination of the statements of the Roman chroniclers concerning their older history, before we can receive them as well-founded and credible. |