Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
mankind, to lead them into the other. His temple at Rome has two gates,
which they call the gates of war, because they stand open in the time of
war, and shut in the times of peace; of which latter there was very
seldom an example, for, as the Roman empire was enlarged and extended,
it was so encompassed with barbarous nations and enemies to be resisted,
that it was seldom or never at peace. Only in the time of Augustus
Caesar, after he had overcome Antony, this temple was shut; as likewise
once before, when Marcus Atilius and Titus Manlius were consuls; but
then it was not long before, wars breaking out, the gates were again
opened. But, during the reign of Numa, those gates were never seen open
a single day, but continued constantly shut for a space of forty-three
years together; such an entire and universal cessation of war existed.
For not only had the people of Rome itself been softened and charmed
into a peaceful temper by the just and mild rule of a pacific prince,
but even the neighboring cities, as if some salubrious and gentle air
had blown from Rome upon them, began to experience a change of feeling,
and partook in the general longing for the sweets of peace and order,
and for life employed in the quiet tillage of soil, bringing up of
children, and worship of the gods. Festival days and sports, and the
secure and peaceful interchange of friendly visits and hospitalities
prevailed all through the whole of Italy. The love of virtue and
justice flowed from Numa's wisdom as from a fountain, and the serenity
of his spirit diffused itself, like a calm, on all sides; so that the
hyperboles of poets were flat and tame to express what then existed;
as that
Over the iron shield the spiders hang their threads,
or that
Rust eats the pointed spear and double-edged sword.
No more is heard the trumpet's brazen roar,
Sweet sleep is banished from our eyes no more.
For, during the whole reign of Numa, there was neither war, nor
sedition, nor innovation in the state, nor any envy or ill-will to his
person, nor plot or conspiracy from views of ambition. Either fear of
the gods that were thought to watch over him, or reverence for his
virtue, or a divine felicity of fortune that in his days preserved human
innocence, made his reign, by whatever means, a living example and
verification of that saying which Plato, long afterwards, ventured to
pronounce, that the sole and only hope of respite or remedy for human
evils was in some happy conjunction of events, which should unite in a
single person the power of a king and the wisdom of a philosopher, so as
to elevate virtue to control and mastery over vice. The wise man is
blessed in himself, and blessed also are the auditors who can hear and
receive those words which flow from his mouth; and perhaps, too, there
is no need of compulsion or menaces to affect the multitude, for the
mere sight itself of a shining and conspicuous example of virtue in the
life of their prince will bring them spontaneously to virtue, and to a
conformity with that blameless and blessed life of good will and mutual
concord, supported by temperance and justice, which is the highest
benefit that human means can confer; and he is the truest ruler who can
best introduce it into the hearts and practice of his subjects. It is
the praise of Numa that no one seems ever to have discerned this so
clearly as he.
As to his children and wives, there is a diversity of reports by several
authors; some will have it that he never had any other wife than Tatia,
nor more children than one daughter called Pompilia; others will have it
that he left also four sons, namely, Pompo, Pinus, Calpus, and Mamercus,
every one of whom had issue, and from them descended the noble and
illustrious families of Pomponii, Pinarii, Calpurnii, and Mamerci, which
for this reason took also the surname of Rex, or King. But there is a
third set of writers who say that these pedigrees are but a piece of
flattery used by writers, who, to gain favor with these great
families, made them fictitious genealogies from the lineage of Numa; and
that Pompilia was not the daughter of Tatia, but Lucretia, another wife
whom he married after he came to his kingdom; however, all of them agree
in opinion that she was married to the son of that Marcius who persuaded
him to accept the government, and accompanied him to Rome where, as a
mark of honor, he was chosen into the senate, and, after the death of
Numa, standing in competition with Tullus Hostilius for the kingdom, and
being disappointed of the election, in discontent killed himself; his
son Marcius, however, who had married Pompilia, continuing at Rome, was
the father of Ancus Marcius, who succeeded Tullus Hostilius in the
kingdom, and was but five years of age when Numa died.
Numa lived something above eighty years, and then, as Piso writes, was
not taken out of the world by a sudden or acute disease, but died of old
age and by a gradual and gentle decline. At his funeral all the glories
of his life were consummated, when all the neighboring states in
alliance and amity with Rome met to honor and grace the rites of his
interment with garlands and public presents; the senators carried the
bier on which his corpse was laid, and the priests followed and
accompanied the solemn procession; while a general crowd, in which women
and children took part, followed with such cries and weeping as if they
had bewailed the death and loss of some most dear relation taken away in
the flower of age, and not of an old and worn-out king. It is said that
his body, by his particular command, was not burnt, but that they made,
in conformity with his order, two stone coffins, and buried both under
the hill Janiculum, in one of which his body was laid, and in the other
his sacred books, which, as the Greek legislators their tables, he had
written out for himself, but had so long inculcated the contents of
them, whilst he lived, into the minds and hearts of the priests, that
their understandings became fully possessed with the whole spirit and
purpose of them; and he, therefore, bade that they should be buried with
his body, as though such holy precepts could not without irreverence be
left to circulate in mere lifeless writings. For this very reason, they
say, the Pythagoreans bade that their precepts should not be committed
to paper, but rather preserved in the living memories of those who were
worthy to receive them; and when some of their out-of-the-way and
abstruse geometrical processes had been divulged to an unworthy person,
they said the gods threatened to punish this wickedness and profanity by
a signal and wide-spreading calamity. With these several instances,
concurring to show a similarity in the lives of Numa and Pythagoras, we
may easily pardon those who seek to establish the fact of a real
acquaintance between them.
Valerius Antias writes that the books which were buried in the aforesaid
chest or coffin of stone were twelve volumes of holy writ and twelve
others of Greek philosophy, and that about four hundred years
afterwards, when P. Cornelius and M. Baebius were consuls, in a time of
heavy rains, a violent torrent washed away the earth, and dislodged the
chests of stone; and, their covers falling off, one of them was found
wholly empty, without the least relic of any human body; in the other
were the books before mentioned, which the praetor Petilius having read
and perused, made oath in the senate, that, in his opinion, it was not
fit for their contents to be made public to the people; whereupon the
volumes were all carried to the Comitium, and there burnt.
It is the fortune of all good men that their virtue rises in glory after
their deaths, and that the envy which evil men conceive against them
never outlives them long; some have the happiness even to see it die
before them; but in Numa's case, also, the fortunes of the succeeding
kings served as foils to set off the brightness of his reputation. For
after him there were five kings, the last of whom ended his old age in
banishment, being deposed from his crown; of the other four, three were
assassinated and murdered by treason; the other, who was Tullus
Hostilius, that immediately succeeded Numa, derided his virtues, and
especially his devotion to religious worship, as a cowardly and mean-
spirited occupation, and diverted the minds of the people to war; but
was checked in these youthful insolences, and was himself driven by an
acute and tormenting disease into superstitions wholly different from
Numa's piety, and left others also to participate in these terrors when
he died by the stroke of a thunderbolt.
COMPARISON OF NUMA WITH LYCURGUS
Having thus finished the lives of Lycurgus and Numa, we shall now,
though the work be difficult, put together their points of difference as
they lie here before our view. Their points of likeness are obvious;
their moderation, their religion, their capacity of government and
discipline, their both deriving their laws and constitutions from the
gods. Yet in their common glories there are circumstances of diversity;
for, first, Numa accepted and Lycurgus resigned a kingdom; Numa received
without desiring it, Lycurgus had it and gave it up; the one from a
private person and a stranger was raised by others to be their king, the
other from the condition of a prince voluntarily descended to the state
of privacy. It was glorious to acquire a throne by justice, yet more
glorious to prefer justice before a throne; the same virtue which made
the one appear worthy of regal power exalted the other to the disregard
of it. Lastly, as musicians tune their harps, so the one let down the
high-flown spirits of the people at Rome to a lower key, as the other
screwed them up at Sparta to a higher note, when they were sunken low by
dissoluteness and riot. The harder task was that of Lycurgus; for it
was not so much his business to persuade his citizens to put off their
armor or ungird their swords, as to cast away their gold or silver, and
abandon costly furniture and rich tables; nor was it necessary to preach
to them, that, laying aside their arms, they should observe the
festivals, and sacrifice to the gods, but rather, that, giving up
feasting and drinking, they should employ their time in laborious and
martial exercises; so that while the one effected all by persuasions and
his people's love for him, the other, with danger and hazard of his
person, scarcely in the end succeeded. Numa's muse was a gentle and
loving inspiration, fitting him well to turn and soothe his people into
peace and justice out of their violent and fiery tempers; whereas, if we
must admit the treatment of the Helots to be a part of Lycurgus's
legislations, a most cruel and iniquitous proceeding, we must own that
Numa was by a great deal the more humane and Greek-like legislator,
granting even to actual slaves a license to sit at meat with their
masters at the feast of Saturn, that they, also, might have some taste
and relish of the sweets of liberty. For this custom, too, is ascribed
to Numa, whose wish was, they conceive, to give a place in the enjoyment
of the yearly fruits of the soil to those who had helped to produce
them. Others will have it to be in remembrance of the age of Saturn,
when there was no distinction between master and slave, but all lived as
brothers and as equals in a condition of equality.
In general, it seems that both aimed at the same design and intent,
which was to bring their people to moderation and frugality; but, of
other virtues, the one set his affection most on fortitude, and the
other on justice; unless we will attribute their different ways to the
different habits and temperaments which they had to work upon by their