XV. By this religious training the city became so easily managed by Numa, and so impressed by his power, as to believe stories of the wildest character about him, and to think nothing incredible or impossible if he wished to do it. For instance, it is related that once he invited many of the citizens to dine with him, and placed before them common vessels and poor fare; but, as they were about to begin dinner, he suddenly said that his familiar goddess was about to visit him, and at once displayed abundance of golden cups and tables covered with costly delicacies. The strangest story of all is that of his conversation with Jupiter. The legend runs that Mount Aventine was not at this time enclosed within the city, but was full of fountains and shady glens, and haunted by two divinities, Picus and Faunus, who may be compared to Satyrs or to Pan, and who, in knowledge of herbs and magic, seem equal to what the Greeks call the Daktyli of Mount Ida. These creatures roamed about Italy playing their tricks, but Numa caught them by filling the spring at which they drank with wine and honey. They turned into all kinds of shapes, and assumed strange and terrible forms, but when they found that they were unable to escape, they told Numa much of the future, and showed him how to make a charm against thunder–bolts, which is used to this day, and is made of onions and hair and sprats. Some say that it was not these deities who told him the charm, but that they by magic arts brought down Jupiter from heaven, and he, in a rage, ordered Numa to make the charm of "Heads"; and when Numa added, "Of onions," he said "Of men's"—"Hair," said Numa, again taking away the terrible part of the imprecation. When then Jupiter said "With living"—"Sprats," said Numa, answering as Egeria had taught him. The god went away appeased, and the place was in consequence called Ilicius. This was how the charm was discovered.
These ridiculous legends show the way in which the people had become accustomed to regard the gods. Indeed Numa is said to have placed all his hopes in religion, to such an extent that even when a message was brought him, saying, "The enemy are approaching," he smiled and said, "And I am sacrificing."
XVI. The first temples that he founded are said to have been those of Fides or Faith, and Terminus. Fides is said to have revealed to the Romans the greatest of all oaths, which they even now make use of; while Terminus is the god of boundaries, to whom they sacrifice publicly, and also privately at the divisions of men's estates; at the present time with living victims, but in old days this was a bloodless sacrifice, for Numa argued that the god of boundaries must be a lover of peace, and a witness of righteousness, and therefore averse to bloodshed.
Indeed Numa was the first king who defined the boundaries of the country, since Romulus was unwilling, by measuring what was really his own, to show how much he had taken from other states: for boundaries, if preserved, are barriers against violence; if disregarded, they become standing proofs of lawless injustice. The city had originally but a small territory of its own, and Romulus gained the greater part of its possessions by the sword. All this Numa distributed among the needy citizens, thereby removing the want which urged them to deeds of violence, and, by turning the people's thoughts to husbandry, he made them grow more civilised as their land grew more cultivated. No profession makes men such passionate lovers of peace as that of a man who farms his own land; for he retains enough of the warlike spirit to fight fiercely in defence of his own property, but has lost all desire to despoil and wrong his neighbours. It was for this reason that Numa encouraged agriculture among the Romans, as a spell to charm away war, and loved the art more because of its influence on men's minds than because of the wealth which it produced. He divided the whole country into districts, which he called pagi, and appointed a head man for each, and a patrol to guard it. And sometimes he himself would inspect them, and, forming an opinion of each man's character from the condition of his farm, would raise some to honours and offices of trust, and blaming others for their remissness, would lead them to do better in future.
XVII. Of his other political measures, that which is most admired is his division of the populace according to their trades. For whereas the city, as has been said, originally consisted of two races, which stood aloof one from the other and would not combine into one, which led to endless quarrels and rivalries, Numa, reflecting that substances which are hard and difficult to combine together, can nevertheless be mixed and formed into one mass if they are broken up into small pieces, because then they more easily fit into each other, determined to divide the whole mass of the people of Rome into many classes, and thus, by creating numerous petty rivalries, to obliterate their original and greatest cause of variance.
His division was according to their trades, and consisted of the musicians, the goldsmiths, the builders, the dyers, the shoemakers, the carriers, the coppersmiths, and the potters. All the other trades he united into one guild. He assigned to each trade its special privileges, common to all the members, and arranged that each should have its own times of meeting, and worship its own special patron god, and by this means he did away with that habit, which hitherto had prevailed among the citizens, of some calling themselves Sabines, and some Romans; one boasting that they were Tatius's men, and other Romulus's. So this division produced a complete fusion and unity. Moreover he has been much praised for another of his measures, that, namely, of correcting the old law which allows fathers to sell their sons for slaves. He abolished this power in the case of married men, who had married with their father's consent; for he thought it a monstrous injustice that a woman, who had married a free man, should be compelled to be the wife of a slave.
XVIII. He also dealt with astronomical matters, not with perfect accuracy, and yet not altogether without knowledge. During the reign of Romulus the months had been in a state of great disorder, some not containing twenty days, some five–and–thirty, and some even more, because the Romans could not reconcile the discrepancies which arise from reckoning by the sun and the moon, and only insisted upon one thing, that the year should consist of three hundred and sixty days.