PLUTARCH –The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Numa Pompilius

PLUTARCH –The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Numa Pompilius

8^th – 7^th Century BC

QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION

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 hear him, as he ascended, cry out that they should hereafter style him by the name of Quinus.

Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Numa Pompilius, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 49

Thus did both parties argue and dispute their cause; but lest meanwhile discord, in the absence of all command, should occasion general confusion, it was agreed that the hundred and fifty senators should interchangeably execute the office of supreme magistrate…
Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Numa Pompilius, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 50

Both parties came at length to the conclusion that the one should choose a king out of the body of the other; the Romans make a choice of a Sabine, or the Sabines name a Roman; this was esteemed the best expedient to put an end to all party spirit, and the prince who should be chosen would have an equal affection to the one party as his electors and to the other as his kinsmen.
Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Numa Pompilius, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 50

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.
Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Numa Pompilius, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 53

Numa also prescribed rules of regulating the days of mourning, according to certain times and ages. As, for example, a child of three years was not to be mourned for at all; one older, up to ten years, for as many months as it was years old; and the longest time of mourning for any person whatsoever was not to exceed the term of ten months; which was the time appointed for women that lost their husbands to continue in widowhood.
Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Numa Pompilius, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 55

In the eighth year of the reign of Numa, a terrible pestilence, which traversed all Italy, ravaged likewise the city of Rome; and the citizens being in distress and despondent, a brazen target, they say, fell from heaven into hand of Numa… and the Muses had assured him it was sent from heaven for the cure and safety of the city, and that, to keep it secure, he was ordered by them to make eleven others, so like in dimensions and form to the original that no thief should be able to distinguish the true from the counterfeit.
Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Numa Pompilius, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 56

 For there is no employment that gives so keen and quick a relish for peace as husbandry and a country life, which leave in men all that kind of courage that makes them ready to fight in defence of their own, while it destroys the licence that breaks out into acts of injustice and rapacity.
Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Numa Pompilius, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 58

During the reign of Romulus, they had let their months run on without any certain or equal term; some of them contained twenty days, others thirty-five, others more; they had no sort of knowledge of the inequality in the motions of the sun and moon; they only kept to the one rule that the whole course of the year contained three hundred and sixty days. Numan, calculating the difference between the lunar and the solar year at eleven days, for that the moon completed her anniversary course in three hundred and fifty –four days, and the sun in three hundred and sixty-five, to remedy this incongruity doubled the eleven days, and every other year added an intercalary month, to follow February, consisting of twenty-two days, and called the Romans the month Mercedinus. This amendment, however, itself, in course of time, came to need other amendments.
Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Numa Pompilius, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 58