XII. The Pontifices also explain, to those who inquire of them, the proper ceremonies at funerals. For Numa taught them not to think that there was any pollution in death, but that we must pay due honours to the gods below, because they will receive all that is noblest on earth. Especially he taught them to honour the goddess Libitina, the goddess who presides over funeral rites, whether she be Proserpine, or rather Venus, as the most learned Romans imagine, not unnaturally referring our birth and our death to the same divinity.
He also defined the periods of mourning, according to the age of the deceased. He allowed none for a child under three years of age, and for one older the mourning was only to last as many months as he lived years, provided those were not more than ten. The longest mourning was not to continue above ten months, after which space widows were permitted to marry again; but she that took another husband before that term was out was obliged by his decree to sacrifice a cow with calf.
Of Numa's many other institutions I shall only mention two, that of the Salii and of the Feciales, which especially show his love of justice. The Feciales are, as it were, guardians of peace, and in my opinion obtain their name from their office; for they were to act as mediators, and not to permit an appeal to arms before all hope of obtaining justice by fair means had been lost. The Greeks call it peace when two states settle their differences by negotiation and not by arms; and the Roman Feciales frequently went to states that had done wrong and begged them to think better of what they had done. If they rejected their offers, then the Feciales called the gods to witness, invoked dreadful curses upon themselves and their country, if they were about to fight in an unjust cause, and so declared war. Against the will of the Feciales, or without their approval, no Roman, whether king or common soldier, was allowed to take up arms, but the general was obliged first to have it certified to him by the Feciales that the right was on his side, and then to take his measures for a campaign. It is said that the great disaster with the Gauls befell the city in consequence of this ceremony having been neglected. The barbarians were besieging Clusium; Fabius Ambustus was sent as an ambassador to their camp to make terms on behalf of the besieged. His proposals met with a harsh reply, and he, thinking that his mission was at an end, had the audacity to appear before the ranks of the men of Clusium in arms, and to challenge the bravest of the barbarians to single combat. He won the fight, slew his opponent and stripped his body; but the Gauls recognised him, and sent a herald to Rome, complaining that Fabius had broken faith and not kept his word, and had waged war against them without its being previously declared. Hereupon the Feciales urged the Senate to deliver the man up to the Gauls, but he appealed to the people, and by their favour escaped his just doom. Soon after the Gauls came and sacked Rome, except the Capitol. But this is treated of more at length in the 'Life of Camillus.'
XIII. The priests called Salii are said to owe their origin to the following circumstances: In the eighth year of Numa's reign an epidemic raged throughout Italy, and afflicted the city of Rome. Now amidst the general distress it is related that a brazen shield fell from heaven into the hands of Numa. Upon this the king made an inspired speech, which he had learned from Egeria and the Muses. The shield, he said, came for the salvation of the city, and they must guard it, and make eleven more like it, so that no thief could steal the one that fell from heaven, because he could not tell which it was. Moreover the place and the meadows round about it, where he was wont to converse with the Muses, must be consecrated to them, and the well by which it was watered must be pointed out as holy water to the vestal virgins, that they might daily take some thence to purify and sprinkle their temple. The truth of this is said to have been proved by the immediate cessation of the plague. He bade workmen compete in imitating the shield, and, when all others refused to attempt it, Veturius Mamurius, one of the best workmen of the time, produced so admirable an imitation, and made all the shields so exactly alike, that even Numa himself could not tell which was the original. He next appointed the Salii to guard and keep them. These priests were called Salii, not, as some say, after a man of Samothrace or of Mantinea named Salius, who first taught the art of dancing under arms, but rather from the springing dance itself, which they dance through the city when they carry out the shields in the month of March, dressed in scarlet tunics, girt with brazen girdles, with brazen helmets on their heads and little daggers with which they strike the shields. The rest of their dance is done with their feet; they move gracefully, whirling round, swiftly and airily counter–changing their positions with light and vigorous motions according to rhythm and measure. The shields are called ancilia, because of their shape; for they are not round, nor with a perfect circumference, but are cut out of a wavy line, and curl in at the thickest part towards each other; or they may be called ancilia after the name of the elbow, ankon, on which they are carried; at least so Juba conjectures in his endeavours to find a Greek derivation for the word. The name may be connected with the fall of the shield from above (anekathen), or with the healing (akesis) of the plague, and the cessation of that terrible calamity, if we must refer the word to a Greek root.
It is related that, to reward Mamurius for his workmanship, his name is mentioned in the song which the Salii sing while they dance their Pyrrhic dance; others, however, say that it is not Veturium Mamurium that they say, but Veterem Memoriam, which means ancient memory.
XIV. After he had arranged all religious ceremonies, he built, near the temple of Vesta, the Regia, as a kind of royal palace; and there he spent most of his time, engaged in religious duties, instructing the priests, or awaiting some divine colloquy. He had also another house on the hill of Quirinus, the site of which is even now pointed out.
In all religious processions through the city the heralds went first to bid the people cease their work, and attend to the ceremony; for just as the Pythagoreans are said to forbid the worship of the gods in a cursory manner, and to insist that men shall set out from their homes with this purpose and none other in their minds, so Numa thought it wrong that the citizens should see or hear any religious ceremony in a careless, half–hearted manner, and made them cease from all worldly cares and attend with all their hearts to the most important of all duties, religion; so he cleared the streets of all the hammering, and cries, and noises which attend the practice of ordinary trades and handicrafts, before any holy ceremony. Some trace of this custom still survives in the practice of crying out Hoc age when the consul is taking the auspices or making a sacrifice. These words mean "Do this thing," and are used to make the bystanders orderly and attentive. Many of his other precepts are like those of the Pythagoreans; for just as they forbid men to sit upon a quart measure, or to stir the fire with a sword, or to turn back when they set out upon a journey, and bid them sacrifice an odd number to the gods above, and an even one to those below, all of which things had a mystical meaning, which was hidden from the common mass of mankind, so also some of Numa's rites can only be explained by reference to some secret legend, such as his forbidding men to make a libation to the gods with wine made from an unpruned vine, and his ordering that no sacrifice should be made without flour, and that men should turn round while worshipping and sit after they had worshipped. The first two of these seem to point to cultivation of the fruits of the earth, as a part of righteousness; the turning round of the worshippers is said to be in imitation of the revolution of the globe, but it seems more probable that, as all temples look towards the east, the worshipper who enters with his back to the sun turns round towards this god also, and begs of them both, as he makes his circuit, to fulfil his prayer. Unless indeed there is an allusion to the symbolical wheel of the Egyptians, and the change of posture means that nothing human is constant, and that, however God may turn about our lives, it is our duty to be content. The act of sitting after prayer was said to portend that such as were good would obtain a solid and lasting fulfilment of their prayers. Or again, this attitude of rest marks the division between different periods of prayer; so that after the end of one prayer they seat themselves in the presence of the gods, in order that under their auspices they may begin the next. This fully agrees with what has been said above, and shows that the lawgiver intended to accustom his countrymen not to offer their prayers in a hurry, or in the intervals of doing something else, but when they were at leisure and not pressed for time.