The vengeful swords and once far-gleaming spears. We have no account of either war or insurrection in the state, during Numa's reign. Nay, he experienced neither enmity nor envy; nor did ambition dictate either open or private attempts against his crown. Whether it were the fear of the gods, who took so pious a man under their protection, or reverence of his virtue, or the singular good fortune of his times, that kept the manners of men pure and unsullied, he was an illustrious instance of that truth which Plato several ages after ventured to deliver concerning government: That the only sure prospect of deliverance from the evils of life will be, when the divine Providence shall so order it, that the regal power, invested in a prince who has the sentiments of a philosopher, shall render virtue triumphant over vice. A man of such wisdom is not only happy in himself, but contributes by his instructions to the happiness of others. There is, in truth, no need either of force or menaces, to direct the multitude; for when they see virtue exemplified in so glorious a pattern as the life of their prince, they become wise of themselves, and endeavour, by friendship and unanimity, by a strict regard to justice and temperance, to form themselves to an innocent and happy life. This is the noblest end of government; and he is most worthy of the royal seat who can regulate the lives and dispositions of his subjects in such a manner. No one was more sensible of this than Numa. As to his wives and children, there are great contradictions among historians. For some say, he had no wife but Tatia, nor any child but one daughter named Pompilia. Others, beside that daughter, give an account of four sons, Pompon, Pinus, Calpus, and Mamercus, every one of which left an honourable posterity, the Pomponii being descended from Pompon, the Pinarii from Pinus. the Calpurnii from Calpus, and the Mamercii from Ma-. mercus. These were surnamed Regis or kings.† But a * Plutarch took this passage from some excellent verses of Bacchylides in praise of peace, given us by Stobæus. tRex was the surname of the Emilians and Marcians, but not of the Pomponians,. the Pinarians, or Mamercians. The Pinarii were descended from a family who were priests of Hercules, and more an cient than the times of Numa. third set of writers accuse the former of forging these genealogies from Numa, in order to ingratiate themselves with particular families. And they tell us, that Pompilia was not the daughter of Tatia, but of Lucretia, another wife, whom he married after he ascended the throne. All, however, agree, that Pompilia was married to Marcius, son of that Marcius who persuaded Numa to accept the crown; for he followed him to Rome, where he was enrolled a senator, and after Numa's death, was competitor with Tullus Hostilius for the throne; but failing in the enterprize, he starved himself to death. His son Marcius, husband to Pompilia, remained in Rome, and had a son named Ancus Marcius, who reigned after Tullus Hostilius. This son is said to have been but five years old at the death of Numa. Numa was carried off by no sudden or acute distemper; but, as Piso relates, wasted away insensibly with old age and a gentle decline. He was some few years above eighty when he died. The neighbouring nations that were in friendship and alliance with Rome, strove to make the honours of his burial equal to the happiness of his life, attending with crowns and other public offerings. The senators carried the bier, and the ministers of the gods walked in procession. The rest of the people, with the women and chil dren, crowded to the funeral; not, as if they were attending the interment of an aged king, but as if they had lost one of their beloved relations in the bloom of life; for they followed it with tears and loud lamentations. They did not burn the body,* because (as we are told) he himself forbade it; but they made two stone coffins, and buried them under the Janiculum; the one containing his body, and the other the sacred books which he had * In the most ancient times they committed the bodies of the dead to the ground, as appears from the history of the patriarchs. But the Egyptians, from a vain desire of preserving their bodies from corruption after death, had them embalmed; persons of condition with rich spices, and even the poor had theirs preserved with salt. The Greeks, to obviate the inconveniences that might possibly happen from corruption, burnt the bodies of the dead; but Pliny tells us that Sylla was the first Roman, whose body was burnt. When Paganism was abolished, the burning of dead bodies ceased with it, and in the belief of the resurrection, christians committed their dead with due care and honour to the earth, to repose there till that great event. written in the same manner as the Grecian legislators wrote their tables of laws.. Numa had taken care, however, in his life-time, to instruct the priests in all that those books contained; and to impress both the sense and practise on their memories. He then ordered them to be buried with him, persuaded that such mysteries could not safely exist in lifeless writing. Influenced by the same reasoning, it is said, the Pythagoreans did not commit their precepts to writing, but entrusted them to the memories of such as they thought worthy of so great a deposit. And when they happened to communicate to an unworthy person their abstruse problems in geometry, they gave out that the gods threatened to avenge his profaneness and impiety with some great and signal calamity. Those, therefore, may be well excused who endeavour to prove by so many resemblances that Numa was acquainted with Pythagoras. Valerius Antias relates, that there were twelve books written in Latin concerning religion, and twelve more of philosophy, in Greek, buried in that coffin. But four hundred years after,* when Publius Cornelius and Marcus Babius were consuls, a prodigious fall of rain having washed away the earth that covered the coffins, and the lids falling off, one of them appeared entirely empty, without the least remains of the body; in the other the books were found. Petilius, then Prætor, having examined them, made his report upon oath to the senate, that it appeared to him inconsistent both with justice and religion, to make them public: In consequence of which all the volumes were carried into the Comitium, and burnt. * Plutarch probably wrote five hundred; for this happened in the year of Rome 573. "One Terentius," says Varo, [ap. S. August. de Civ. Dei] "had a piece of ground near the Janiculum; and an husbandman of his one day accidentally running over Numa's tomb, turned up some of the legislator's books, wherein he gave his reasons for establishing the religion of the Romans as he left it. The husbandman carried these books to the prætor, and the prætor to the senate, who, after having read his frivolous reasons for his religious establishments, agreed, that the books should be destroyed, in pursuance of Numa's intentions. It was accordingly decreed, that the prætor should throw them into the fire.” But though Numa's motives for the religion he established might be trivial enough, that was not the chief reason for surpressing them. The real, at least the principal reason, was the many new superstitions, equally trivial, which the Romans had introduced, and the worship which they paid to images, contrary to Numa's appointment. Glory follows in the train of great men, and increases after their death; for envy does not long survive them: nay, it sometimes dies before them. The misfortunes, indeed, of the succeeding kings added lustre to the character of Numa. Of the five that came after him, the last was driven from the throne, and lived long in exile; and of the other four, not one died a natural death. Three were traitorously slain. As for Tullus Hostilius, who reigned next after Numa, he ridiculed and despised many of his best institutions, particularly his religious ones, as effeminate and tending to inaction; for his view was to dispose the people to war. He did not, however, abide by his irreligious opinions, but falling into a severe and complicated sickness, he changed them, for a superstition, very different from Numa's piety: Others, too, were infected with the same false principles, when they saw the manner of his death, which is said to have happened by lightning.t NUMA AND LYCURGUS COMPARED. HAVING LAVING gone through the lives of Numa and Lycurgus, we must now endeavour (though it is no easy matter) to contrast their actions. The resemblances between them however, are obvious enough; their wisdom, for instance, their piety, their talents for government, the instruction of their people, and their deriving their laws from a divine source. But the chief of their peculiar distinctions, was Numa's accepting a crown, and Lycur gus's relinquishing one. The former received a kingdom * None are so superstitious in distress as those, who, in their pros perity, have laughed at religion. The famous Canon Vossius was no less remarkable for the greatness of his fears, than he was for the littleness of his faith. †The palace of Tullus Hostilius was burnt down by lightning; and he, with his wife and children, perished in the flames. Though some historians say, that Ancus Marcius, who, as the grandson of Numa, expected to succeed to the crown, took the opportunity of the storm, to assassinate the king. VOL. I. without seeking it, the latter resigned one when he had it in possession. Numa was advanced to sovereign power when a private person and a stranger; Lycurgus reduced himself from a king to a private person. It was an honour to the one to attain to royal dignity by his justice; and it was an honour to the other to prefer justice to that dignity. Virtue rendered the one so respectable as to deserve a throne, and the other so great as to be above it. The second observation is, that both managed their respective governments, as musicians do the lyre, each in a different manner. Lycurgus wound up the strings of Sparta, which he found relaxed with luxury, to a stronger tone: Numa softened the high and harsh tone of Rome. - The former had the more difficult task. For it was not their swords and breast plates, which he persuaded his citizens to lay aside, but their gold and silver, their sump tuous beds and tables; what he taught them, was, not to devote their time to feasts and sacrifices, after quitting the rugged paths of war, but to leave entertainments and the pleasures of wine, for the laborious exercises of arms and the wrestling-ring. Numa effected his purposes in a friendly way by the regard and veneration the people had for his person; Lycurgus had to struggle with conflicts and dangers, before he could establish his laws. The genius of Numa was more mild and gentle, softening and attempering the fiery dispositions of his people to justice and peace. If we be obliged to admit the sanguinary and unjust treatment of the Helotes, as a part of the politics of Lycurgus, we must allow Numa to have been far the more humane and equitable lawgiver, who permitted absolute slaves to taste of the honour of freemen, and in the Saturnalia to be entertained along with their masters.* For this also they tell us was one of Numa's institutions, that persons in a state of servitude, should be admitted, at least once a year, to the liberal enjoyment of those fruits *The Saturnalia was a feast celebrated on the 14th of the kalends of January. Beside the sacrifices in honour of Saturn, who, upon his retiring into Italy, introduced there the happiness of the golden age, servants were at this time indulged in mirth and freedom, in imemory of the equality which prevailed in that age; presents were sent from one friend to another; and no war was to be proclaimed, or offender executed. It is uncertain when this festival was instituted. Macrobius says, it was celebrated in Italy long before the building of Rome; and probably he is right, for the Greeks kept the same feast under the name of Chronia. Macrob, Saturn, 1. i. c. 7. |