Numa Pompilius   

Though the pedigrees of noble families of Rome go back in exact form
as far as Numa Pompilius, yet there is great diversity amongst historians
concerning the time in which he reigned; a certain writer called Clodius,
in a book of his entitled Strictures on Chronology, avers that the
ancient registers of Rome were lost when the city was sacked by the
Gauls, and that those which are now extant were counterfeited, to
flatter and serve the humour of some men who wished to have themselves
derived from some ancient and noble lineage, though in reality with
no claim to it. And though it be commonly reported that Numa was a
scholar and a familiar acquaintance of Pythagoras, yet it is again
contradicted by others, who affirm that he was acquainted with neither
the Greek language nor learning, and that he was a person of that
natural talent and ability as of himself to attain to virtue, or else
that he found some barbarian instructor superior to Pythagoras. Some
affirm, also, that Pythagoras was not contemporary with Numa, but
lived at least five generations after him; and that some other Pythagoras,
a native of Sparta, who, in the sixteenth Olympiad, in the third year
of which Numa became king, won a prize at the Olympic race, might,
in his travel through Italy, have gained acquaintance with Numa, and
assisted him in the constitution of his kingdom; whence it comes that
many Laconian laws and customs appear amongst the Roman institutions.
Yet, in any case, Numa was descended of the Sabines, who declare themselves
to be a colony of the Lacedaemonians. And chronology, in general,
is uncertain; especially when fixed by the lists of victors in the
Olympic games, which were published at a late period by Hippias the
Elean, and rest on no positive authority. Commencing, however, at
a convenient point, we will proceed to give the most noticeable events
that are recorded of the life of Numa.
It was the thirty-seventh year, counted from the foundation of Rome,
when Romulus, then reigning, did, on the fifth day of the month of
July, called the Caprotine Nones, offer a public sacrifice at the
Goat's Marsh, in presence of the senate and people of Rome. Suddenly
the sky was darkened, a thick cloud of storm and rain settled on the
earth; the common people fled in affright, and were dispersed; and
in this whirlwind Romulus disappeared, his body being never found
either living or dead. A foul suspicion presently attached to the
patricians, and rumours were current among the people as if that they,
weary of kingly government, and exasperated of late by the imperious
deportment of Romulus towards them, had plotted against his life and
made him away, that so they might assume the authority and government
into their own hands. This suspicion they sought to turn aside by
decreeing divine honours to Romulus, as to one not dead but translated
to a higher condition. And Proculus, a man of note, took oath that
he saw Romulus caught up into heaven in his arms and vestments, and
heard him, as he ascended, cry out that they should hereafter style
him by the name of Quirinus.
This trouble, being appeased, was followed by another, about the election
of a new king; for the minds of the original Romans and the new inhabitants
were not as yet grown into that perfect unity of temper, but that
there were diversities of factions amongst the commonalty and jealousies
and emulations amongst the senators; for though all agreed that it
was necessary to have a king, yet what person or of which nation was
matter of dispute. For those who had been builders of the city with
Romulus, and had already yielded a share of their lands and dwellings
to the Sabines, were indignant at any pretension on their part to
rule over their benefactors. On the other side, the Sabines could
plausibly allege, that, at their king Tatius's decease, they had peaceably
submitted to the sole command of Romulus; so now their turn was come
to have a king chosen out of their own nation; nor did they esteem
themselves to have combined with the Romans as inferiors, nor to have
contributed less than they to the increase of Rome, which, without
their numbers and association, could scarcely have merited the name
of a city.