Numa

the Romans from Numa, who, some say, partook of the wisdom of Pythagoras;

but the very rulers of men, men engaged in public life and farming, as it may happen, and simply living — as Cyrus ruled the Persians, and Deioces the Medes, and Hellen those named after him, and Aeolus the Aeolians, and Dorus the Dorians, and Numa the Romans, and Dardanus the Phrygians.

All of them squabble over the laws of Solon and Draco and Numa and Zaleucus, as to which of these, and not those, they shall follow—though none even of those lawgivers laid down what they ought.

For what is less to be approved than that the images of all men fall upon me — Homer, Archilochus, Romulus, Numa, Pythagoras, Plato — and not in the form they had:

For, since the discourse has led me to this place, I will show that I have learned better things about worshipping the immortal gods, by the pontifical law and the custom of our forefathers, from these little ladles which Numa left us, of which Laelius speaks in that golden little oration, than from the reasonings of the Stoics.

And since the whole religion of the Roman people is divided into rites and auspices, with a third thing joined to these, if from portents and prodigies the interpreters of the Sibyl or the soothsayers have given warning for the sake of prediction, I have judged that none of these religious observances is ever to be despised, and have so persuaded myself that Romulus by the auspices and Numa by the …

Numa, the king of the Romans, was a Pythagorean;

With reason, then, did the king of the Romans — Numa was his name — being a Pythagorean, first of all men found a temple to Faith and Peace.

After the college of heralds had pronounced a war to be just we are informed by Plutarch in the life of Numa, that the Senate further deliberated, whether it was expedient to undertake it.

Among other of Numa’s institutions, his manner of celebrating the rites of Terminus, the deity of boundaries, is much commended;

Nay, I even think that, on account of admiration for the Pythagoreans, King Numa too was reckoned a Pythagorean by later men.

Ancus is said to have had no father, being the grandson of Numa.

Even if rites were introduced by Numa, yet not yet by images or temples did they delude your affairs with the divine.

To look to you also, lords of the nations — Pompilius Numa was a man, who burdened the Romans with the most laborious superstitions.

For although a superstitious curiosity was conceived by Numa, yet not as yet did divine worship among the Romans consist of images or temples.

It may have been permitted to Christ too to invent a divinity — a thing properly his — not such a one as, by making rude and still savage men astonished at a multitude of so many gods to be propitiated, might temper them to humanity, which was Numa's work, but one which might open the eyes of men already polished, and deceived by their very refinement, to the recognition of truth.