Numa Pompilius   

the hill to the people, by whom he was received and congratulated
with shouts and acclamations of welcome, as a holy king, and beloved
of all the gods.
The first thing he did at his entrance into government was to dismiss
the band of three hundred men which had been Romulus's life-guard,
called by him Celeres, saying that he would not distrust those who
put confidence in him; nor rule over a people that distrusted him.
The next thing he did was to add to the two priests of Jupiter and
Mars a third, in honour of Romulus, whom he called the Flamen Quirinalis.
The Romans anciently called their priests Flamines, by corruption
of the word Pilamines, from a certain cap which they wore, called
Pileus. In those times Greek words were more mixed with the Latin
than at present; thus also the royal robe, which is called, Laena,
Juba says, is the same as the Greek Chlaena; and that the name of
Camillus, given to the boy with both his parents living, who serves
in the temple of Jupiter, was taken from the name given by some Greeks
to Mercury, denoting his office of attendance on the gods.
When Numa had, by such measures, won the favour and affection of the
people, he set himself without delay to the task of bringing the hard
and iron Roman temper to somewhat more of gentleness and equity. Plato's
expression of a city in high fever was never more applicable than
to Rome at that time; in its origin formed by daring and warlike spirits,
whom bold and desperate adventure brought thither from every quarter,
it had found in perpetual wars and incursions on its neighbours its
after sustenance and means of growth, and in conflict with danger
the source of new strength; like piles, which the blows of the hammer
serve to fix into the ground. Wherefore Numa, judging it no slight
undertaking to mollify and bend to peace the presumptuous and stubborn
spirits of this people, began to operate upon them with the sanctions
of religion. He sacrificed often and used processions and religious
dances, in which most commonly he officiated in person; by such combinations
of solemnity with refined and humanizing pleasures, seeking to win
over and mitigate their fiery and warlike tempers. At times, also,
he filled their imaginations with religious terrors, professing that
strange apparitions had been seen, and dreadful voices heard; thus
subduing and humbling their minds by a sense of supernatural fears.
This method which Numa used made it believed that he had been much
conversant with Pythagoras; for in the philosophy of the one, as in
the policy of the other, man's relations to the deity occupy a great
place. It is said, also, that the solemnity of his exterior garb and
gestures was adopted by him from the same feeling with Pythagoras.
For it is said of Pythagoras, that he had taught an eagle to come
at his call, and stoop down to him in his flight; and that, as he
passed among the people assembled at the Olympic games, he showed
them his golden thigh; besides many other strange and miraculous seeming
practices, on which Timon the Philasian wrote the distich-
"Who, of the glory of a juggler proud,
With solemn talk imposed upon the crowd."
In like manner Numa spoke of a certain goddess or mountain nymph that
was in love with him, and met him in secret, as before related; and
professed that he entertained familiar conversation with the Muses,
to whose teaching he ascribed the greatest part of his revelations;
and amongst them, above all, he recommended to the veneration of the
Romans one in particular, whom he named Tacita, the silent; which
he did perhaps in imitation and honour of the Pythagorean silence.
His opinion, also, of images is very agreeable to the doctrine of
Pythagoras; who conceived of the first principle of being as transcending
sense and passion, invisible and incorrupt, and only to be apprehended
by abstract intelligence. So Numa forbade the Romans to represent
God in the form of man or beast, nor was there any painted or graven
image of a deity admitted amongst them for the space of the first
hundred and seventy years, all of which time their temples and chapels
were kept free and pure from images; to such baser objects they deemed
it impious to liken the highest, and all access to God impossible,