Numa Pompilius (715-673 B.C.)

Information on the second of the 7 kings of Rome, Numa Pompilius.

More of this Feature • Romulus • L. Tarquinius Priscus

Related Resources • Rome - Early My page of resources on the early period of Roman history, including the seven kings and the Etruscans. • Numa Pompilius • Vestal Virgins The first Vestal was taken from her parents "as though she had been captured in war," and led by the hand of the second king of Rome Numa Pompilius.

Elsewhere on the Web • The Roman Monarchy James Reubel's timeline showing synchronous events in the political, social, legal, and literary/artistic spheres. • Vestal Virgins from Women's Life in Ancient Greece and Rome. • Kings of Rome Outline One or two lines of important detail about the rulers. • Numa's Calendar Changes • Roman Calendar To the 304 day calendar of ten months, Numa added February and January between December and March thereby increasing the calendar to between 354 and 355 days.

There was living, in those days, at Cures, a Sabine city, a man of renowned justice and piety - Numa Pompilius. He was as conversant as any one in that age could be with all divine and human law. His master is given as Pythagoras of Samos, as tradition speaks of no other. But this is erroneous, for it is generally agreed that it was more than a century later, in the reign of Servius Tullius....
Livy

During the legendary reign of the first king of Rome, Romulus, the bachelor Romans had forcibly taken Sabine women. In the interests of harmony, the Sabine women, now Roman wives, persuaded their husbands and fathers not to slaughter each other. When Romulus died, the Sabines refused to permit another Roman to exert power over them. Romans and Sabines reached a compromise. The Romans agreed to a Sabine king, but they would select him. The Romans picked the honorable Sabine Numa Pompilius. Numa, however, thought he'd have to be crazy to wear the crown.

I should but be, methinks, a laughingstock, while I should go about to inculcate the worship of the gods and give lessons in the love of justice and the abhorrence of violence and war, to a city whose needs are rather for a captain than for a king.
-Plutarch

"Yet Romulus had the advantage to be thought divinely born and miraculously preserved and nurtured. My birth was mortal.... The very points of my character that are most commended mark me as unfit to reign, love of retirement and of studies inconsistent with business, a passion that has become inveterate in me for peace, for unwarlike occupations...."
-Plutarch

"[Numa Pompilius] built the temple of Janus at the foot of the Aventine as an index of peace and war, to signify when it was open that the State was under arms, and when it was shut that all the surrounding nations were at peace."
Livy I.19

According to Plutarch, Numa Pompilius' first official act was to dismiss the guard. Then, acting on the belief that religion, sacrifice, and fear of the gods would keep his people content and out of war, he began to innovate. First he appointed a third flamen priest to honor Romulus (Quirinus) in addition to those already honoring Jupiter and Mars. Numa also created the priests known as pontifices (singular: pontifex) with himself the leader, or Pontifex Maximus. His job was to prescribe religious ceremonies and to guard the vestal virgins whom he may have instituted.

To facilitate religious observance, Numa altered the calendar. He set aside certain days for business and others for religion. According to Plutarch, Numa divided the year into 12 lunar months with interpolated intercalary ones, as necessary, to ensure that once every 20 years the sun would be in the same position.

Numa's peaceful reign lasted 43 years (Livy I.21).