Numa Pompilius


Acknowledgement: Thanks to ylpow for some interesting articles on the Roman calendar before Julius Caesar's reforms.

Some 37 years after the founding of Rome, which according to tradition was in the year 753 BC, Romulus disappeared in a thunderstorm. The patricians, the Roman nobility, were suspected of having murdered him until Julius Proculus informed the people that he had had a vision of Romulus, who said that he had been taken up to join the gods and was to be worshipped under the name Quirinus.

There was considerable unrest between the original Romans and the Sabines who had joined them after the city was founded over who would be the next king. For the time being it was arranged that the senators should each rule with the king's powers for a period of 12 hours until some more permanent solution could be found. Eventually, they decided that the Romans and Sabines should each elect a king from the other group, i.e., the Romans would elect a Sabine and the Sabines a Roman. The Romans were to choose first, and their choice was the Sabine, Numa Pompilius. The Sabines agreed to accept Numa as the king without bothering to elect anyone else, and a deputation from both Romans and Sabines went off to tell Numa of his election.

Numa didn't even live in Rome, but in a nearby town called Cures. Numa had been born on the very day Rome was founded (21 April), and was the son-in-law of Tatius, a Sabine who had ruled Rome as co-king with Romulus for a period of five years. After Numa's wife died, he had become something of a recluse, and was believed to have been taken by a nymph or nature spirit called Egeria as her lover.

When the delegation from Rome came, Numa refused the position of king at first, but was later talked into accepting by his father and Marcius, a relative, and some of the local people from Cures. They argued that left to themselves the Romans would continue to be just as warlike as they had been under Romulus and it would be better if the Romans had a more peace-loving king who could moderate their bellicosity or, if that proved to be impossible, at least direct it away from Cures and the other Sabine communities.

So, Numa left for Rome, where his election as king was confirmed by the people. Before he finally accepted, however, he insisted on watching the sky for a sign in the flight of birds that his kingship would be acceptable to the gods.

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