Numa Pompilius

Numa Pompilius (753-674 BC) was the second king of Rome (716-674 BC), successor to Romulus. He married Tacia, daughter of the Sabine king Titus Tacio, for which he was brother-in-law of Romulus. Very little is known about this king. Much of the news comes to us via a biography written by the Greek author Plutarch (c. 46-125).

Reign

After the death or disappearance of Romulus comes an interregnum (a year without a king) after which Numa Pompilius is elected by the Senate for his sense of justice and for his religious competence, already advanced in years, a pious man and wise man who lived in the city of Cures. He was of Sabine origin. He gave laws and strengthened the rights and peace agreements between Rome and the rest of the cities.

He was also the creator of the main religious institutions, and it is said that he ordered the construction of the temple of Janus, at the foot of Mount Argileto. He also took care of reforming the calendar by dividing it into twelve lunar months, adding the months of January and February, to the ten months of the Romulean calendar. The month of March was the first of the year and, surely, February was placed in the last position, which he maintained perhaps until the IV century a. C. when the beginning of the civil calendar was set in January and it became the second month.

The Romans at this time had a custom: to close the doors of the temple as a sign of peace, to open them when Rome was at war. During the reign of Numa Pompilius, the doors were always closed. It is said that he had the power to unleash the fire of Jupiter. In other words, he knew how to produce electric shocks that caused fear among his enemies.

According to Plutarch, Numa Pompilius was the first king to organize a corporation of artisans. He instituted eight classes: flutists, goldsmiths, carpenters, dyers, shoemakers, tanners, bronzers, and potters.

He was also in charge of organizing the Roman religion, both in the public sphere and in the official sphere. Each family had its cult called Sacra and the priest and leader of this cult was the pater familias.

In the same way, each Curia (the Romans were divided into three tribes: Sabines, Latins and Etruscans plus thirty curiae) had its worship directed in each case by a curion. The Roman families (the gens) had a bond between them that were the sacra gentilicia, which were administered by a priest they called flamen >. The sacred family was sustained by the contribution of the stips, which was a contribution offered by all the families.

With this king the so-called juvenilista period of the Lupercos brotherhood ends, the one whose initiation of its young people was interrupted by the kidnapping of Remo. Those boys were eternal and always faithful adolescents who surrounded Romulo until his death and were the ones who made up his personal guard. They were the three hundred celeres or fast ones.

Numa is credited with establishing the temple of the vestals, a sacred temple where some virgin priestesses kept the sacred fire burning, since religion saw fire as the beginning of life. Numa spent a lot of time strengthening the Roman religion and the worship of the gods, as well as mourning and customs. Plutarch indicates that Numa's authority was legitimized by the relationship that this king had with the nymph Egeria.

After his death, Tullus Hostilio succeeded him and years later his grandson Anco Marcio was the fourth King of Rome.

Gens Pompilia

King Numa Pompilius was married twice. The first with Tacia, daughter of the Sabine king Titus Tacio, with whom he would not engender offspring. Later he would marry Lucrecia, from whom Pomponio, Pino, Capo, Mamerco, Pompilio and according to some scholars Pompilia would be born. These in turn gave rise to the Gens: Pomponia, Pinaria, Calpurnia, Aemilia, Pompilio and Pompilia.

Agent of the Gods

Oil on canvas Numa Pompilio receives the laws of Rome from the Ninpha Aegria (1806) by Felice Giani.

Numa was traditionally revered by the Romans for his wisdom and piety. In addition to Jupiter's endorsement, he is believed to have had a direct and personal relationship with a number of deities, most famously the nymph Egeria, who according to legend taught him to be a wise lawgiver. According to Tito Livio, Numa claimed that he had held nightly meetings with Egeria on the proper way to establish sacred rites for the city. Plutarch suggests that he took advantage of superstition to give himself an aura of awe and divine fascination, in order to cultivate kinder behaviors among the warlike early Romans, such as honoring the gods, respecting the law, behaving humanely before enemies, and living proper respectable lives.

Numa is said to have authored several "holy books" where he had embodied the divine teachings, most of them coming from Egeria and the Muses. Plutarco (quoting Valerio Antias) and Livio noted that at his request he was buried next to these "sacred books", preferring that the norms and rituals they prescribed be preserved in the living memory of the priests of the state., instead of being preserved as relics subject to oblivion and disuse. It was believed that about half of these books—Plutarch and Livy differ in their number—embraced the priesthoods he had established or created, including the flamins, pontifices, >Salii, and fetiales and their rites. The other books dealt with philosophy (disciplina sapientiae). According to Plutarch these books were recovered some 400 years later (actually almost 500 years, for example in 181 BC according to Livy) during a natural disaster that exposed the tomb. They were examined by the Senate and burned as they were considered inappropriate to be released to the people. Dionysius of Halicarnassus suggests that they were kept under enormous secrecy by the pontifices.

Numa is credited with forcing the two loaves Pico and Fauno to reveal some prophecies about things to come.

Numa, supported and trained by Egeria, allegedly engaged in a lightning battle with Jupiter himself, in an apparition where Numa tried to find a protective ritual against thunder and lightning strikes.

During a pestilential epidemic that was wreaking havoc among the population, a prodigy took place: an ancilla fell from the sky. When he was brought before Numa, he declared that Egeria had enlightened him that this was a symbol of Jupiter's protection, for which Numa organized due reconnaissance measures, thus putting an immediate end to the plague. The shield became a sacred relic of the Romans and was placed in the care of the saliares.

The Story of Numa's Books

Tito Livio narrates that while L. Petilius was digging in the area of the scribe at the foot of the Janiculum, some peasants found two stone sarcophagi, eight feet long by just over 1 wide, both with inscriptions in Greek and Latin characters: one stating that Numa Pompilius, son of Pompon, King of the Romans, was buried (here); and another asserting that Numa's books were inside it. When Petilius opened it after the advice of his friends, the one inscribed with the king's name was empty, the other contained two stacks with 7 books each, which were incomplete but seemed recent, 7 in Latin dealing with law pontifical and seven on Greek philosophy as if it belonged to that remote past.

The books were shown to other people and the discovery was made public. Praetor Q. Petilius, who was a friend of L. Petilius, asked for them, found them very dangerous for religion and told Lucius that he would have to burn them, but allowed him to try to get them back by law or other methods.. The scribe brought the case before the courts of the plebs, and the tribunes in response took it to the senate. The praetor declared that he was prepared to swear that it was not a good thing either to read or to keep those books, and the senate deliberated that the offer of the oath was sufficient by itself, that the books should be burned in the Comitium as soon as possible and that the compensation fixed by the praetor and the tribunes had to be assumed by the owner L. Petilius, although they declined to accept the amount. The books were burned by the victimarii.

The praetor's action has been seen as politically motivated, and in accordance with the Catonian reaction of those years. It is relevant, however, that some of the analysts of those times or just a few years later, do not seem to present any doubt about the authenticity of the books. The whole incident has been critically re-analyzed by the philologist E. Peruzzi, who through the comparison of different versions, endeavors to prove the general authenticity of the books. Instead, the position of M.J. Pena is more reserved and critical.

French-speaking scholars A. Delatte and J. Carcopino believe that the incident was the result of a royal initiative by the Pythagorean sect of Rome. The fears of the Roman authorities must be explained in connection with the nature of the doctrines contained in the books, which supposedly contained a type of physikòs lógos, a partly moral and partly cosmological interpretation of religious beliefs that has been corroborated by Delatte as belonging to ancient Pythagoreanism. Part of it must have been in contradiction with the beliefs of the ceremonial of omens and fulgurals and with the procuratio of prodigies. Most of the ancient authors narrate the presence of treatises on Pythagorean philosophy, but some, like Cayo Sempronio Tuditano, mention only religious decrees.