Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities

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§ 2.61.1 But those who banish everything that is fabulous from history say that the report concerning Egeria was invented by Numa, to the end that, when once the people were possessed with a fear of the gods, they might more readily pay regard to him and willingly receive the laws he should enact, as coming from the gods.
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§ 2.61.2 They say that in this he followed the example of the Greeks, emulating the wisdom both of Minos the Cretan and of Lycurgus the Lacedaemonian. For the former of these claimed to hold converse with Zeus, and going frequently to the Dictaean mountain, in which the Cretan legends say that the new-born Zeus was brought up by the Curetes, he used to descend into the holy cave; and having composed his laws there, he would produce them, affirming that he had received them from Zeus. And Lycurgus, paying visits to Delphi, said he was forming his code of laws under the instruction of Apollo.
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§ 2.61.3 But, as I am sensible that to give a particular account of the legendary histories, and especially of those relating to gods, would require a long discussion, I shall omit doing so, and shall relate instead the benefits which the Romans seem to me to have received from this man's rule, according to the information I have derived from their own histories. But first I will show in what confusion the affairs of the State were before he came to the throne.
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§ 2.62.1 After the death of Romulus the senate, being now in full control of the government and having held the supreme power for one year, as I have related, began to be at odds with itself and to split into factions over questions of pre-eminence and equality. For the Alban element, who together with Romulus had planted the colony, claimed the right, not only of delivering their opinions first and enjoying the greatest honours, but also of being courted by the newcomers.
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§ 2.62.2 Those, on the other hand, who had been admitted afterwards into the number of the patricians from among the new settlers thought that they ought not to be excluded from any honours or to stand in an inferior position to the others. This was felt particularly by those who were of the Sabine race and who, in virtue the treaty made by Romulus with Tatius, supposed they had been granted citizenship by the original inhabitants on equal terms, and that they had shown the same favour to the former in their turn.
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§ 2.62.3 The senate being thus at odds, the clients also were divided into two parties and each joined their respective factions. There were, too, among the plebeians not a few, lately admitted into the number of the citizens, who, having never assisted Romulus in any of his wars, had been neglected by him and had received neither a share of land nor any booty. These, having no home, but being poor and vagabonds, were by necessity enemies to their superiors and quite ripe for revolution.
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§ 2.62.4 So Numa, having found the affairs of the State in such a raging sea of confusion, first relieved the poor among the plebeians by distributing to them some small part of the land which Romulus had possessed and of the public land; and afterwards he allayed the strife of the patricians, not by depriving them of anything the founders of the city had gained, but by bestowing some other honours on the new settlers.
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§ 2.62.5 And having attuned the whole body of the people, like a musical instrument, to the sole consideration of the public good and enlarged the circuit of the city by the addition of the Quirinal hill (for till that time it was still without a wall), he then addressed himself to the other measures of government, labouring to inculcate these two things by the possession of which he conceived the State would become prosperous and great: first, piety, by informing his subjects that the gods are the givers and guardians of every blessing to mortal men, and, second, justice, through which, he showed them, the blessings also which the gods bestow bring honest enjoyment to their possessors.
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§ 2.63.1 As regards the laws and institutions by which he made great progress in both these directions, I do not think it fitting that I should enter into all the details, not only because I fear the length of such a discussion but also because I do not regard the recording of them as necessary to a history intended for Greeks; but I shall give a summary account of the principal measures, which are sufficient to reveal the man's whole purpose, beginning with his regulations concerning the worship of the gods.
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§ 2.63.2 I should state, however, that all those rites which he found established by Romulus, either in custom or in law, he left untouched, looking upon them all as established in the best possible manner. But whatever he thought had been overlooked by his predecessor, he added, consecrating many precincts to those gods who had hitherto received no honours, erecting many altars and temples, instituting festivals in honour of each, and appointing priests to have charge of their sanctuaries and rites, and enacting laws concerning purifications, ceremonies, expiations and many other observances and honours in greater number than are to be found in any other city, either Greek or barbarian, even in those that have prided themselves the most at one time or another upon their piety.
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§ 2.63.3 He also ordered that Romulus himself, as one who had shown a greatness beyond mortal nature, should be honoured, under the name of Quirinus, by the erection of a temple and by sacrifices throughout the year. For while the Romans were yet in doubt whether divine providence or human treachery had been the cause of his disappearance, a certain man, named Julius, descended from Ascanius, who was a husbandman and of such a blameless life that he would never have told an untruth for his private advantage, arrived in the Forum and said that, as he was coming in from the country, he saw Romulus departing from the city fully armed and that, as he drew near to him, he heard him say these words:
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§ 2.63.4 “ Julius, announce to the Romans from me, that the genius to whom I was allotted at my birth is conducting me to the gods, now that I have finished my mortal life, and that I am Quirinus.” Numa, having reduced his whole system of religious laws to writing, divided them into eight parts, that being the number of the different classes of religious ceremonies.
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§ 2.64.1 The first division of religious rites he assigned to the thirty curiones, who, as I have stated, perform the public sacrifices for the curiae.
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§ 2.64.2 The second, to those called by the Greeks stephanêphoroi or “wearers of the crown” and by the Romans flamines; they are given this name from their wearing caps and fillets, called † flama, which they continue to wear even to this day.
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§ 2.64.3 The third, to the commanders of the celeres, who, as I have stated, were appointed to be the body-guards of the kings and fought both as cavalry and infantry; for these also performed certain specified religious rites.
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§ 2.64.4 The fourth, to those who interpret the signs sent by the gods and determine what they portend both to private persons and to the public; these, from one branch of the speculations belonging to their art, the Romans call augurs, and we should call them oiônopoloi or “soothsayers by means of birds”; they are skilled in all sorts of divination in use among the Romans, whether founded on signs appearing in the heavens, in mid-air or on the earth.
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§ 2.64.5 The fifth he assigned to the virgins who are the guardians of the sacred fire and who are called Vestals by the Romans, after the goddess whom they serve, he himself having been the first to build a temple at Rome to Vesta and to appoint virgins to be her priestesses. But concerning them it is necessary to make a few statements that are most essential, since the subject requires it; for there are problems that have been thought worthy of investigation by many Roman historians in connexion with this topic and those authors who have not diligently examined into the causes of these matters have published rather worthless accounts.
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§ 2.65.1 At any rate, as regards the building of the temple of Vesta, some ascribe it to Romulus, looking upon it as an inconceivable thing that, when a city was being founded by a man skilled in divination, a public hearth should not have been erected first of all, particularly since the founder had been brought up at Alba, where the temple of this goddess had been established from ancient times, and since his mother had been her priestess. And recognizing two classes of religious ceremonies — the one public and common to all the citizens, and the other private and confined to particular families — they declare that on both these grounds Romulus was under every obligation to worship this goddess.
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§ 2.65.2 For they say that nothing is more necessary for men than a public hearth, and that nothing more nearly concerned Romulus, in view of his descent, since his ancestors had brought the sacred rites of this goddess from Ilium and his mother had been her priestess. Those, then, who for these reasons ascribe the building of the temple to Romulus rather than to Numa seem to be right, in so far as the general principle is concerned, that when a city was being founded, it was necessary for a hearth to be established first of all, particularly by a man who was not unskilled in matters of religion; but of the details relating to the building of the present temple and to the virgins who are in the service of the goddess they seem to have been ignorant.
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§ 2.65.3 For, in the first place, it was not Romulus who consecrated to the goddess this place where the sacred fire is preserved (a strong proof of this is that it is outside of what they call Roma Quadrata, which he surrounded with a wall, whereas all men place the shrine of the public hearth in the best part of a city and nobody outside of the walls); and, in the second place, he did not appoint the service of the goddess to be performed by virgins, being mindful, I believe, of the experience that had befallen his mother, who while she was serving the goddess lost her virginity; for he doubtless felt that the remembrance of his domestic misfortunes would make it impossible for him to punish according to the traditional laws any of the priestesses he should find to have been violated.
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§ 2.65.4 For this reason, therefore, he did not build a common temple of Vesta nor did he appoint virgins to be her priestesses; but having erected a hearth in each of the thirty curiae on which the members sacrificed, he appointed the chiefs of the curiae to be the priests of those hearths, therein imitating the customs of the Greeks that are still observed in the most ancient cities. At any rate, what are called prytaneia among them are temples of Hestia, and are served by the chief magistrates of the cities.
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§ 2.66.1 Numa, upon taking over the rule, did not disturb the individual hearths of the curiae, but erected one common to them all in the space between the Capitoline hill and the Palatine (for these hills had already been united by a single wall into one city, and the Forum, in which the temple is built, lies between them), and he enacted, in accordance with the ancestral custom of the Latins, that the guarding of the holy things should be committed to virgins.
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§ 2.66.2 There is some doubt, however, what it is that is kept in this temple and for what reason the care of it has been assigned to virgins, some affirming that nothing is preserved there but the fire, which is visible to everybody. And they very reasonably argue that the custody of the fire was committed to virgins, rather than to men, because fire in incorrupt and a virgin is undefiled, and the most chaste of mortal things must be agreeable to the purest of those that are divine.
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§ 2.66.3 And they regard the fire as consecrated to Vesta because that goddess, being the earth and occupying the central place in the universe, kindles the celestial fires from herself. But there are some who say that besides the fire there are some holy things in the temple of the goddess that may not be revealed to the public, of which only the pontiffs and the virgins have knowledge. As a strong confirmation of this story they cite what happened at the burning of the temple during the First Punic War between the Romans and the Carthaginians over Sicily.
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§ 2.66.4 For when the temple caught fire and the virgins fled from the flames, one of the pontiffs, Lucius Caecilius, called Metellus, a man of consular rank, the same who exhibited a hundred and thirty-eight elephants in the memorable triumph which he celebrated for his defeat of the Carthaginians in Sicily, neglecting his own safety for the sake of the public good, ventured to force his way into the burning structure, and, snatching up the holy things which the virgins had abandoned, saved them from the fire; for which he received the honours from the State, as the inscription upon his statue on the Capitol testifies.
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§ 2.66.5 Taking this incident, then, as an admitted fact, they add some conjectures of their own. Thus, some affirm that the objects preserved here are a part of those holy things which were once in Samothrace; that Dardanus removed them out of that island into the city which he himself had built, and that Aeneas, when he fled from the Troad, brought them along with the other holy things into Italy. But others declare that it is the Palladium that fell from Heaven, the same that was in the possession of the people of Ilium; for they hold that Aeneas, being well acquainted with it, brought it into Italy, whereas the Achaeans stole away the copy, — an incident about which many stories have been related both by poets and by historians.
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§ 2.66.6 For my part, I find from very many evidences that there are indeed some holy things, unknown to the public, kept by the virgins, and not the fire alone; but what they are I do not think should be inquired into too curiously, either by me of by anyone else who wishes to observe the reverence due to the gods.
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§ 2.67.1 The virgins who serve the goddess were originally four and were chosen by the kings according to the principles established by Numa, but afterwards, from the multiplicity of the sacred rites they perform, their number was increased of six, and has so remained down to our time. They live in the temple of the goddess, into which none who wish are hindered from entering in the daytime, whereas it is not lawful for any man to remain there at night.
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§ 2.67.2 They were required to remain undefiled by marriage for the space of thirty years, devoting themselves to offering sacrifices and performing the other rites ordained by law. During the first ten years their duty was to learn their functions, in the second ten to perform them, and during the remaining ten to teach others. After the expiration of the term of thirty years nothing hindered those who so desired from marrying, upon laying aside their fillets and the other insignia of their priesthood. And some, though very few, have done this; but they came to ends that were not at all happy or enviable. In consequence, the rest, looking upon their misfortunes as ominous, remain virgins in the temple of the goddess till their death, and then once more another is chosen by the pontiffs to supply the vacancy.
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§ 2.67.3 Many high honours have been granted them by the commonwealth, as a result of which they feel no desire either for marriage or for children; and severe penalties have been established for their misdeeds. It is the pontiffs who by law both inquire into and punish these offences; to Vestals who are guilty of lesser misdemeanours they scourge with rods, but those who have suffered defilement they deliver up to the most shameful and the most miserable death.
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§ 2.67.4 While they are yet alive they are carried upon a bier with all the formality of a funeral, their friends and relations attending them with lamentations, and after being brought as far as the Colline Gate, they are placed in an underground cell prepared within the walls, clad in their funeral attire; but they are not given a monument or funeral rites or any other customary solemnities.
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§ 2.67.5 There are many indications, it seems, when a priestess is not performing her holy functions with purity, but the principal one is the extinction of the fire, which the Romans dread above all misfortunes, looking upon it, from whatever cause it proceeds, as an omen that portends the destruction of the city; and they bring fire again into the temple with many supplicatory rites, concerning which I shall speak on the proper occasion.
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§ 2.68.1 However, it is also well worth relating in what manner the goddess has manifested herself in favour of those virgins who have been falsely accused. For these things, however incredible they may be, have been believed by the Romans and their historians have related much about them.
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§ 2.68.2 To be sure, the professors of the atheistic philosophies, — if, indeed, their theories deserve the name of philosophy, — who ridicule all the manifestations of the gods which have taken place among either the Greeks or barbarians, will also laugh these reports to scorn and attribute them to human imposture, on the ground that none of the gods concern themselves in anything relating to mankind. Those, however, who do not absolve the gods from the care of human affairs, but, after looking deeply into history, hold that they are favourable to the good and hostile to the wicked, will not regard even these manifestations as incredible.
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§ 2.68.3 It is said, then, that once, when the fire had been extinguished through some negligence on the part of Aemilia, who had the care of it at the time and had entrusted it to another virgin, one of those who had been newly chosen and were then learning their duties, the whole city was in great commotion and an inquiry was made by the pontiffs whether there might not have been some defilement of the priestess to account for the extinction of the fire. Thereupon, they say, Aemilia, who was innocent, but distracted at what had happened, stretched out her hands toward the altar and in the presence of the priests and the rest of the virgins cried:
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§ 2.68.4 “O Vesta, guardian of the Romans' city, if, during the space of nearly thirty years, I have performed the sacred offices to thee in a holy and proper manner, keeping a pure mind and a chaste body, do thou manifest thyself in my defence and assist me and do not suffer thy priestess to die the most miserable of all deaths; but if I have been guilty of any impious deed, let my punishment expiate the guilt of the city.” 5
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§ 2.68.5 Having said this, she tore off the band of the linen garment she had on and threw it upon the altar, they say, following her prayer; and from the ashes, which had been long cold and retained no spark, a great flame flared up through the linen, so that the city no longer required either expiations or a new fire.
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§ 2.69.1 But what I am going to relate is still more wonderful and more like a myth. They say that somebody unjustly accused one of the holy virgins, whose name was Tuccia, and although he was unable to point to the extinction of the fire as evidence, he advanced false arguments based on plausible proofs and depositions; and that the virgin, being ordered to make her defence, said only this, that she would clear herself from the accusation by her deeds.
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§ 2.69.2 Having said this and called upon the goddess to be her guide, she led the way to the Tiber, with the consent of the pontiffs and escorted by the whole population of the city; and when she came to the river, she was so hardy as to undertake the task which, according to the proverb, is among the most impossible of achievement: she drew up water from the river in a sieve, and carrying it as far as the Forum, poured it out at the feet of the pontiffs.
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§ 2.69.3 After which, they say, her accuser, though great search was made for him, could never be found either alive or dead. But, though I have yet many other things to say concerning the manifestations of this goddess, I regard what has already been said as sufficient.
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§ 2.70.1 The sixth division of his religious institutions was devoted to those the Romans call Salii, whom Numa himself appointed out of the patricians, choosing twelve young men of the most graceful appearance. These are the Salii whose holy things are deposited on the Palatine hill and who are themselves called the (Salii) Palatini; for the (Salii) Agonales, by some called the Salii Collini, the repository of whose holy things is on the Quirinal hill, were appointed after Numa's time by King Hostilius, in pursuance of a vow he had made in the war against the Sabines. All these Salii are a kind of dancers and singers of hymns in praise of the gods of war.
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§ 2.70.2 Their festival falls about the time of the Panathenaea, in the month which they call March, and is celebrated at the public expense for many days, during which they proceed through the city with their dances to the Forum and to the Capitol and to many other places both private and public. They wear embroidered tunics girt about with wide girdles of bronze, and over these are fastened, with brooches, robes striped with scarlet and bordered with purple, which they call trabeae; this garment is peculiar to the Romans and a mark of the greatest honour. On their heads they wear apices, as they are called, that is, high caps contracted into the shape of a cone, which the Greeks call kyrbasiai.
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§ 2.70.3 They have each of them a sword hanging at their girdle and in their right hand they hold a spear or a staff or something else of the sort, and on their left arm a Thracian buckler, which resembles a lozenge-shaped shield with its sides drawn in, such as those are said to carry who among the Greeks perform the sacred rites of the Curetes.
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§ 2.70.4 And, in my opinion at least, the Salii, if the word be translated into Greek, are Curetes, whom, because they are kouroi or “young men,” we call by that name from their age, whereas the Romans call them Salii from their lively motions. For to leap and skip is by them called salire; and for the same reason they call all other dancers saltatores, deriving their name from the Salii, because their dancing also is attended by much leaping and capering.
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§ 2.70.5 Whether I have been well advised or not in giving them this appellation, anyone who pleases may gather from their actions. For they execute their movements in arms, keeping time to a flute, sometimes all together, sometimes by turns, and while dancing sing certain traditional hymns. But this dance and exercise performed by armed men and the noise they make by striking their bucklers with their daggers, if we may base any conjectures on the ancient accounts, was originated by the Curetes. I need not mention the legend which is related concerning them, since almost everybody is acquainted with it.
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§ 2.71.1 Among the vast number of bucklers which both the Salii themselves bear and some of their servants carry suspended from rods, they say there is one that fell from heaven and was found in the palace of Numa, though no one had brought it thither and no buckler of that shape had ever before been known among the Italians; and that for both these reasons the Romans concluded that this buckler had been sent by the gods.
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§ 2.71.2 They add that Numa, desiring that it should be honoured by being carried through the city on holy days by the most distinguished young men and that annual sacrifices should be offered to it, but at the same time being fearful both of the plot of his enemies and of its disappearance by theft, caused many other bucklers to be made resembling the one which fell from heaven, Mamurius, an artificer, having undertaken the work; so that, as a result of the perfect resemblance of the man-made imitations, the shape of the buckler sent by the gods was rendered inconspicuous and difficult to be distinguished by those who might plot to possess themselves of it.
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§ 2.71.3 This dancing after the manner of the Curetes was a native institution among the Romans and was held in great honour by them, as I gather from many other indications and especially from what takes place in their processions both in the Circus and in the theatres.
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§ 2.71.4 For in all of them young men clad in handsome tunics, with helmets, swords and bucklers, march in file. These are the leaders of the procession and are called by the Romans, from a game of which the Lydians seem to have been the inventors, ludiones; they show merely a certain resemblance, in my opinion, to the Salii, since they do not, like the Salii, do any of the things characteristic of the Curetes, either in their hymns or dancing. And it was necessary that the Salii should be free men and native Romans and that both their fathers and mothers should be living; whereas the others are of any condition whatsoever. But why should I say more about them?
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§ 2.72.1 The seventh division of his sacred institutions was devoted to the college of the fetiales; these may be called in Greek eirênodikai or “arbiters of peace.” They are chosen men, from the best families, and exercise their holy office for life; King Numa was also the first who instituted this holy magistracy among the Romans.
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§ 2.72.2 But whether he took his example from those called the Aequicoli, according to the opinion of some, or from the city of Ardea, as Gellius writes, I cannot say. It is sufficient for me to state that before Numa's reign the college of the fetiales did not exist among the Romans.
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§ 2.72.3 It was instituted by Numa when he was upon the point of making war on the people of Fidenae, who had raided and ravaged his territories, in order to see whether they would come to an accommodation with him without war; and that is what they actually did, being constrained by necessity. But since the college of the fetiales is not in use among the Greeks, I think it incumbent on me to relate how many and how great affairs fall under its jurisdiction, to the end that those who are unacquainted with the piety practised by the ares of those times may not be surprised to find that all their wars had the most successful outcome; for it will appear that the origins and motives of them all were most holy, and for this reason especially the gods were propitious to them in the dangers that attended them.
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§ 2.72.4 The multitude of duties, to be sure, that fall within the province of these fetiales makes it no easy matter to enumerate them all; but to indicate them by a summary outline, they are as follows: It is their duty to take care that the Romans do not enter upon an unjust war against any city in alliance with them, and if others begin the violation of treaties against them, to go as ambassadors and first make formal demand for justice, and then, if the others refuse to comply with their demands, to sanction war.
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§ 2.72.5 In like manner, if any people in alliance with the Romans complain of having been injured by them and demand justice, these men are to determine whether they have suffered anything in violation of their alliance; and if they find are complaints well grounded, they are to seize the accused and deliver them up to the injured parties. They are also to take cognizance of the crimes committed against ambassadors, to take care that treaties are religiously observed, to make peace, and if they find that peace has been made otherwise than is prescribed by the holy laws, to set it aside; and to inquire into and expiate the transgressions of the generals in so far as they relate to oaths and treaties, concerning which I shall speak in the proper places.
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§ 2.72.6 As to the functions they performed in the quality of heralds when they went to any city thought to have injured the Romans (for these things also are worthy of our knowledge, since they were carried out with great regard to both religion and justice), I have received the following account: One of these fetiales, chosen by his colleagues, wearing his sacred robes and insignia to distinguish him from all others, proceeded towards the city whose inhabitants had done the injury; and, stopping at the border, he called upon Jupiter and the rest of the gods to witness that he was come to demand justice on behalf of the Roman State.
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§ 2.72.7 Thereupon he took an oath that he was going to a city that had done an injury; and having uttered the most dreadful imprecations against himself and Rome, if what he averred was not true, he then entered their borders. Afterwards, he called to witness the first person he met, whether it was one of the countrymen or one of the townspeople, and having repeated the same imprecations, he advanced towards the city. And before he entered it he called to witness in the same manner the gate-keeper or the first person he met at the gates, after which he proceeded to the forum; and taking his stand there, he discussed with the magistrates the reasons for his coming, adding everywhere the same oaths and imprecations.
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§ 2.72.8 If, then, they were disposed to offer satisfaction by delivering up the guilty, he departed as a friend taking leave of friends, carrying the prisoners with him. Or, if they desired time to deliberate, he allowed them ten days, after which he returned and waited till they had made this request three times. But after the expiration of the thirty days, if the city still persisted in refusing to grant him justice, he called both the celestial and infernal gods to witness and went away, saying no more than this, that the Roman State would deliberate at its leisure concerning these people.
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§ 2.72.9 Afterwards he, together with the other fetiales, appeared before the senate and declared that they had done everything that was ordained by the holy laws, and that, if the senators wished to vote for war, there would be no obstacle on the part of the gods. But if any of these things was omitted, neither the senate nor the people had the power to vote for war. Such, then, is the account we have received concerning the fetiales.
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§ 2.73.1 The last branch of the ordinances of Numa related to the sacred offices allotted to those who held the higher priesthoods and the greatest power among the Romans. These, from one of the duties they perform, namely, the repairing of the wooden bridge, are in their own language called pontifices; but they have jurisdiction over the most weighty matters.
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§ 2.73.2 For they the judges in all religious causes wherein private citizens, magistrates or the ministers of the gods are concerned; they make laws for the observance of any religious rites, not established by written law or custom, which may seem to them worthy of receiving the sanction of law and custom; they inquire into the conduct of all magistrates to whom the performance of any sacrifice or other religious duty is committed, and also into that of all the priests; they take care that their servants and ministers whom they employ in religious rites commit no error in the matter of the sacred laws; to the laymen who are unacquainted with such matters they are the expounders and interpreters of everything relating to the worship of the gods and genii; and if they find that any disobey their orders, they inflict punishment upon them with due regard to every offence; moreover, they are not liable to any prosecution or punishment, nor are they accountable to the senate or to the people, at least concerning religious matters.
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§ 2.73.3 Hence, if anyone wishes to call them hierodidaskaloi, hieronomoi, hierophylakes, or, as I think proper, hierophantai, he will not be in error. When one of them dies, another is appointed in his place, being chosen, not by the people, but by the pontifices themselves, who select the person they think best qualified among their fellow citizens; and the one thus approved of receives the priesthood, provided the omens are favourable to them.
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§ 2.73.4 These — not to speak of others less important — are the greatest and the most notable regulations made by Numa concerning religious worship and divided by him according to the different classes of sacred rites; and through these it came about that the city increased in piety.
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§ 2.74.1 His regulations, moreover, that tended to inspire frugality and moderation in the life of the individual citizen and to create a passion for justice, which preserves the harmony of the State, were exceedingly numerous, some of them being comprehended in written laws, and others not written down but embodied in custom and long usage. To treat of all these would be a difficult task; but mention of the two of them which have been most frequently cited will suffice to give evidence of the rest.
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§ 2.74.2 First, to the end that people should be content with what they had and should not covet what belonged to others, there was the law that appointed boundaries to every man's possessions. For, having ordered every one to draw a line around his own land and to place stones on the bounds, he consecrated these stones to Jupiter Terminalis and ordained that all should assemble at the place every year on a fixed day and offer sacrifices to them; and he made the festival in honour of these gods of boundaries among the most dignified of all.
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§ 2.74.3 This festival the Romans call Terminalia, from the boundaries, and the boundaries themselves, by the change of one letter as compared with our language, they call termines. He also enacted that, if any person demolished or displaced these boundary stones he should be looked upon as devoted to the god, to the end that anyone who wished might kill him a sacrilegious person with impunity and without incurring any stain of guilt.
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§ 2.74.4 He established this law with reference not only to private possessions but also to those belonging to the public; for he marked these also with boundary stones, to the end that the gods of boundaries might distinguish the lands of the Romans from those of their neighbours, and the public lands from such as belonged to private persons. Memorials of this custom are observed by the Romans down to our times, purely as a religious form. For they look upon these boundary stones as gods and sacrifice to them yearly, offering up no kind of animal (for it is not lawful to stain these stones with blood), but cakes made of cereals and other first-fruits of the earth.
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§ 2.74.5 But they ought still to observe the motive, as well, which led Numa to regard these boundary stones as gods and content themselves with their own possessions without appropriating those of others either by violence or by fraud; whereas now there are some who, in disregard of what is best and of the example of their ancestors, instead of distinguishing that which is theirs from that which belongs to others, set as bounds to their possessions, not the law, but their greed to possess everything, — which is disgraceful behaviour. But we leave the considerations of these matters to others.
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§ 2.75.1 By such laws Numa brought the State to frugality and moderation. And in order to encourage the observance of justice in the matter of contracts, he hit upon a device which was unknown to all who have established the most celebrated institutions. For, observing that contracts made in public and before witnesses are, out of respect for the persons present, generally observed and that few are guilty of any violation of them, but that those which are made without witnesses — and these are much more numerous than the others — rest on no other security than the faith of those who make them, he thought it incumbent on him to make this faith the chief object of his care and to render it worthy of divine worship.
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§ 2.75.2 For he felt that Justice, Themis, Nemesis, and those the Greeks call Erinyes, with other concepts of the kind, had been sufficiently revered and worshipped as gods by the men of former times, but that Faith, than which there is nothing greater nor more sacred among men, was not yet worshipped either by states in their public capacity or by private persons.
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§ 2.75.3 As the result of these reflexions he, first of all men, erected a temple to the Public Faith and instituted sacrifices in her honour at the public expense in the same manner as to the rest of the gods. And in truth the result was bound to be that this attitude of good faith and constancy on the part of the State toward all men would in the course of time render the behaviour of the individual citizens similar. In any case, so revered and inviolable a thing was good faith in their estimation, that the greatest oath a man could take was by his own faith, and this had greater weight than all the testimony taken together. And if there was any dispute between one man and another concerning a contract entered into without witnesses, the faith of either of the parties was sufficient to decide the controversy and prevent it from going any farther.
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§ 2.75.4 And the magistrates and courts of justice based their decisions in most causes on the oaths of the parties attesting by their faith. Such regulations, devised by Numa at that time to encourage moderation and enforce justice, rendered the Roman State more orderly than the best regulated household.
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§ 2.76.1 But the measures which I am now going to relate made it both careful to provide itself with necessaries and industrious in acquiring the advantages that flow from labour. For this man, considering that a State which was to love justice and to continue in the practice of moderation ought to abound in all things necessary to the support of life, divided the whole country into what are called pagi or “districts,” and over each of these districts he appointed an official whose duty it was to inspect and visit the lands lying in his own jurisdiction.
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§ 2.76.2 These men, going their rounds frequently, made a record of the lands that were well and ill cultivated and laid it before the king, who repaid the diligence of the careful husbandmen with commendations and favours, and by reprimanding and fining the slothful encouraged them to cultivate their lands with greater attention. Accordingly, the people, being freed from wars and exempt from any attendance on the affairs of the State, and at the same time being disgraced and punished for idleness and sloth, all became husbandmen and looked upon the riches which the earth yields and which of all others are the most just as more enjoyable than the precarious influence of a military life.
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§ 2.76.3 And by the same means Numa came to be beloved of his subjects, the example of his neighbours, and the theme of posterity. It was owing to these measures that neither civil dissension broke the harmony of the State nor foreign war interrupted the observance of his most excellent and admirable institutions. For their neighbours were so far from looking upon the peaceful tranquillity of the Romans as an opportunity for attacking them, that, if at any time they were at war with one another, they chose the Romans for mediators and wished to settle their enmities under the arbitration of Numa.
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§ 2.76.4 This man, therefore, I should take no shame in placing among the foremost of those who have been celebrated for their felicity in life. For he was of royal birth and of royal appearance; and he pursued an education which was not the kind of useless training that deals only with words, but a discipline that taught him to practise piety and every other virtue.
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§ 2.76.5 When he was young he was thought worthy to assume the sovereignty over the Romans, who had invited him to that dignity upon the reputation of his virtue; and he continued to command the obedience of his subjects during his whole life. He lived to a very advanced age without any impairment of his faculties and without suffering any blow at Fortune's hands; and he died the easiest of all deaths, being withered by age, the genius who had been allotted to him from his birth having continued the same favour to him till he disappeared from among men. He lived more than eighty years and reigned forty-three, leaving behind him, according to most historians, four sons and one daughter, whose posterity remain to this day; but according to Gnaeus Gellius he left only one daughter, who was the mother of Ancus Marcius, the second king of the Romans after him.
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§ 2.76.6 His death was greatly lamented by the state, which gave him a most splendid funeral. He lies buried upon the Janiculum, on the other side of the river Tiber. Such is the account we have received concerning Numa Pompilius.
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§ 3.1.1 BOOK 3 After the death of Numa Pompilius the senate, being once more in full control of the commonwealth, resolved to abide by the same form of government, and as the people did not adopt any contrary opinion, they appointed some of the older senators to govern as interreges for a definite number of days. These men, pursuant to the unanimous desire of the people, chose as king Tullus Hostilius, whose descent was as follows.
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§ 3.1.2 From Medullia, a city which had been built by the Albans and made a Roman colony by Romulus after he had taken it by capitulation, a man of distinguished birth and great fortune, named Hostilius, had removed to Rome and married a woman of the Sabine race, the daughter of Hersilius, the same woman who had advised her country-women to go as envoys to their fathers on behalf of their husbands at the time when the Sabines were making war against the Romans, and was regarded as the person chiefly responsible for the alliance then concluded by the leaders of the two nations. This man, after taking part with Romulus in many wars and performing mighty deeds in the battles with the Sabines, died, leaving an only son, a young child at the time, and was buried by the kings in the principal part of the Forum and honoured with a monument and an inscription testifying to his valour.
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§ 3.1.3 His only son, having come to manhood and married a woman of distinction, had by her Tullius Hostilius, a man of action, the same who was now chosen king by a vote passed by the citizens concerning him according to the laws; and the decision of the people was confirmed by favourable omens from Heaven. The year in which he assumed the sovereignty was the second of the twenty-seventh Olympiad, the one in which Eurybates, an Athenian, won the prize in the foot-race, Leostratus being archon at Athens [671/0 BCE].
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§ 3.1.4 Tullus, immediately upon his accession, gained the hearts of all the labouring class and of the needy among the populace by performing an act of the most splendid kind. It was this: The kings before him had possessed much fertile land, especially reserved for them, from the revenues of which they not only offered sacrifices to the gods, but also had abundant provision for their private needs. This land Romulus had acquired in war by dispossessing the former owners, and when he died childless, Numa Pompilius, his successor, had enjoyed its use; it was no longer the property of the state, but the inherited possession of the successive kings.
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§ 3.1.5 Tullus now permitted this land to be divided equally among such of the Romans as had no allotment, declaring that his own patrimony was sufficient both for the sacrifices and for his personal expenditures. By this act of humanity he relieved the poor among the citizens by freeing them from the necessity of labouring as serfs on the estates of others. And, to the end that none might lack a habitation either, he included within the city wall the hill called the Caelian, where those Romans who were unprovided with dwellings were allotted a sufficient amount of ground and built houses; and he himself had his residence in this quarter. These, then, are the memorable actions reported of this king so far as regards his civil administration.
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§ 3.2.1 Many military exploits are related of him, but the greatest are those which I shall now narrate, beginning with the war against the Albans. The man responsible for the quarrel between the two cities and the severing of their bond of kinship was an Alban named Cluilius, who had been honoured with the chief magistracy; this man, vexed at the prosperity of the Romans and unable to contain his envy, and being by nature headstrong and somewhat inclined to madness, resolved to involve the cities in war with each other.
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§ 3.2.2 But not seeing how he could persuade the Albans to permit him to lead an army against the Romans without just and urgent reasons, he contrived a plan of the following sort: he permitted the poorest and boldest of the Albans to pillage the fields of the Romans, promising them immunity, and so caused many to overrun the neighbouring territory in a series of plundering raids, as they would now be pursuing without danger gains from which they would never desist even under the constraint of fear.
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§ 3.2.3 In doing this he was following a very natural line of reasoning, as the event bore witness. For he assumed that the Romans would not submit to being plundered but would rush to arms, and he would thus have an opportunity of accusing them to his people as the aggressors in the war; and he also believed that the majority of the Albans, envying the prosperity of their colony, would gladly listen to these false accusations and would begin war against the Romans. And that is just what happened.
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§ 3.2.4 For when the worst elements of each city fell to robbing and plundering each other and at last a Roman army made an incursion into the territory of the Albans and killed or took prisoner many of the bandits, Cluilius assembled the people and inveighed against the Romans at great length, showed them many who were wounded, produced the relations of those who had been seized or slain, and at the same time added other circumstances of his own invention; whereupon it was voted on his motion to send an embassy first of all to demand satisfaction for what had happened, and then, if the Romans refused it, to begin war against them.
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§ 3.3.1 Upon the arrival of the ambassadors at Rome, Tullius, suspecting that they had come to demand satisfaction, resolved to anticipate them in doing this, since he wished to turn upon the Albans the blame for breaking the compact between them and their colony. For there existed a treaty between the two cities which had been made in the reign of Romulus, wherein, among other articles, it was stipulated that neither of them should begin a war, but if either complained of any injury whatsoever, that city would demand satisfaction from the city which had done the injury, and failing to obtain it, should then make war as a matter of necessity, the treaty being looked upon as already broken.
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§ 3.3.2 Tullius, therefore, taking care that the Romans should not be the first called upon to give satisfaction and, by refusing it, become guilty in the eyes of the Albans, ordered the most distinguished of his friends to entertain the ambassadors of the Albans with every courtesy and to detain them inside their homes while he himself, pretending to be occupied with some necessary business, put off their audience.
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§ 3.3.3 The following night he sent to Alba some Romans of distinction, duly instructed as to the course they should pursue, together with the fetiales, to demand satisfaction from the Albans for the injuries the Romans had received. These, having performed their journey before sunrise, found Cluilius in the market-place at the time when the early morning crowd was gathered there. And having set forth the injuries which the Romans had received at the hands of the Albans, they demanded that he should act in conformity with the compact between the cities.
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§ 3.3.4 But Cluilius, alleging that the Albans had been first in sending envoys to Rome to demand satisfaction and had not even been vouchsafed an answer, ordered the Romans to depart, on the ground that they had violated the terms of the treaty, and declared war against them. The chief of the embassy, however, as he was departing, demanded from Cluilius an answer to just this one question, namely, whether he admitted that those were violating the treaty who, being the first called upon to give satisfaction, had refused to comply with any part of their obligation.
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§ 3.3.5 And when Cluilius said he did, he exclaimed: “Well, then, I call the gods, whom we made witnesses of our treaty, to witness that the Romans, having been the first to be refused satisfaction, will be undertaking a just war against the violators of that treaty, and that it is you Albans who have avoided giving satisfaction, as the events themselves show. For you, being the first called upon for satisfaction, have refused it and you have been the first to declare war against us. Look, therefore, for vengeance to come upon you ere long with the sword.”
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§ 3.3.6 Tullius, having learned of all this from the ambassadors upon their return to Rome, then ordered the Albans to be brought before him and to state the reasons for their coming; and when they had delivered the message entrusted to them by Cluilius and were threatening war in case they did not obtain satisfaction, he replied: “I have anticipated you in doing this, and having obtained nothing that the treaty directs, I declare against the Albans the war that is both necessary and just.”
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§ 3.4.1 After these pretences they both prepared themselves for war, not only arming their own forces but also calling to their assistance those of their subjects. And when they had everything ready the two armies drew near to each other and encamped at the distance of forty stades from Rome, the Albans at the Cluilian Ditches, as they are called (for they still preserve the name of the man who constructed them) and the Romans a little farther inside, having chosen the most convenient place for their camp.
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§ 3.4.2 When the two armies saw each other's forces neither inferior in numbers nor poorly armed nor to be despised in respect of their other preparations, they lost their impetuous ardour for the combat, which they had felt at first because of their expectation of defeating the enemy by their very onset, and they took thought rather of defending themselves by building their ramparts to a greater height than of being the first to attack. At the same time the most intelligent among them began to reflect, feeling that they were not being governed by the best counsels, and there was a spirit of faultfinding against those in authority.
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§ 3.4.3 And as the time dragged on in vain (for they were not injuring one another to any notable extent by sudden dashes of the light-armed troops or by skirmishes of the horse ), the man who was looked upon as responsible for the war, Cluilius, being irked at lying idle, resolved to march out with his army and challenge the enemy to battle, and if they declined it, to attack their entrenchments.
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§ 3.4.4 And having made his preparations for an engagement and all the plans necessary for an attack upon the enemy's ramparts, in case that should prove necessary, when night came on he went to sleep in the general's tent, attended by his usual guard; but about daybreak he was found dead, no signs appearing on his body either of wounds, strangling, poison, or any other violent death.
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§ 3.5.1 This unfortunate event appearing extraordinary to everybody, as one would naturally expect, and the cause of it being enquired into — for no preceding illness could be alleged — those who ascribed all human fortunes to divine providence said that this death had been due to the anger of the gods, because he had handled an unjust and unnecessary war between the mother-city and her colony. But others, who looked upon war as a profitable business and thought they had been deprived of great gains, attributed the event to human treachery and envy, accusing some of his fellow citizens of the opposing faction of having made away with him by secret and untraceable poisons that they had discovered.
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§ 3.5.2 Still others alleged that, being overcome with grief and despair, he had taken his own life, since all his plans were becoming difficult and impracticable and none of the things that he had looked forward to in the beginning when he first took hold of affairs was succeeding according to his desire. But those who were not influenced by either friendship or enmity for the general and based their judgment of what had happened on the soundest grounds were of the opinion that neither the anger of the gods nor the envy of the opposing faction nor despair of his plans had put an end to his life, but rather Nature's stern law and fate, when once he had finished the destined course which is marked out for everyone that is born. 3 Such, then, was the end that Cluilius met, before he had performed any noble deed. In his place Mettius Fufetius was chosen general by those in the camp and invested with absolute power; he was a man without either ability to conduct a war or constancy to preserve a peace, one who, though he had been at first as zealous as any of the Albans in creating strife between the two cities and for that reason had been honoured with the command after the death of Cluilius, yet after he had obtained it and perceived the many difficulties and embarrassments with which the business was attended, no longer adhered to the same plans, but resolved to delay and put off matters, since he observed that not all the Albans now had the same ardour for war and also that the victims, whenever he offered sacrifice concerning battle, were unfavourable. 4 And at last he even determined to invite the enemy to an accommodation, taking the initiative himself in sending heralds, after he had been informed of a danger from the outside which threatened both the Albans and Romans, a danger which, if they did not terminate their war with each other by a treaty, was unavoidable and bound to destroy both armies. The danger was this:
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§ 3.6.1 The Veientes and Fidenates, who inhabited large and populous cities, had in the reign of Romulus engaged in a war with the Romans for command and sovereignty, and after losing many armies in the course of the war and being punished by the loss of part of their territory, they had been forced to become subjects of the conquerors; concerning which I have given a precise account in the preceding Book. But having enjoyed an uninterrupted peace during the reign of Numa Pompilius, they had greatly increased in population, wealth and every other form of prosperity. Elated, therefore, by these advantages, they again aspired to freedom, assumed a bolder spirit and prepared to yield obedience to the Romans no longer.
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§ 3.6.2 For a time, indeed, their intention of revolting remained undiscovered, but during the Alban war it became manifest. For when they learned that the Romans had marched out with all their forces to engaged the Albans, they thought that they had now got the most favourable opportunity for their attack, and through their most influential men they entered into a secret conspiracy. It was arranged that all who were capable of bearing arms should assemble in Fidenae, going secretly, a few at a time, so as to escape as far as possible the notice of those against whom the plot was aimed,

Via ToposText (topostext.org), a project of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation created by Brady Kiesling. Translated by Earnest Cary (1879-19??) and Edward Spelman (d. 1767). Composed ca. 7 BCE. Licence: public domain. Source.