Numa Pompilius - Agent of The Gods

Agent of The Gods

Numa was traditionally celebrated by the Romans for his wisdom and piety. In addition to the endorsement by Jupiter, he is supposed to have had a direct and personal relationship with a number of deities, most famously the nymph Egeria, who according to legend taught him to be a wise legislator. According to Livy, Numa claimed that he held nightly consultations with Egeria on the proper manner of instituting sacred rites for the city. Plutarch suggests that he played on superstition to give himself an aura of awe and divine allure, in order to cultivate more gentle behaviours among the warlike early Romans, such as honoring the gods, abiding by law, behaving humanely to enemies, and living proper, respectable lives.

Numa was said to have authored several "sacred books" in which he had written down divine teachings, mostly from Egeria and the Muses. Plutarch (citing Valerius Antias) and Livy records that at his request he was buried along with these "sacred books", preferring that the rules and rituals they prescribed be preserved in the living memory of the state priests, rather than preserved as relics subject to forgetfulness and disuse. About half of these books—Plutarch and Livy differ on their number—were thought to cover the priesthoods he had established or developed, including the flamines, pontifices, Salii, and fetiales and their rituals. The other books dealt with philosophy (disciplina sapientiae). According to Plutarch, these books were recovered some four hundred years later (in reality almost five hundred years, i. e. in 186 BC according to Livy) at the occasion of a natural accident that exposed the tomb. They were examined by the Senate, deemed to be inappropriate for disclosure to the people, and burned. Dionysius of Halicarnassus hints that they were actually kept as a very close secret by the pontifices.

Numa is reputed to have constrained the two minor gods Picus and Faunus into delivering some prophecies of things to come.

Numa, supported and prepared by Egeria, reportedly held a battle of wits with Jupiter himself, in an apparition whereby Numa sought to gain a protective ritual against lightning strikes and thunder.

At a time of a pestilential disease that was playing havoc in the population, a prodigy happened : a shield which had undecipherable letters written on it, came to fall from the sky on the Palatine Hill. When it was brought to Numa he declared that Egeria had enlightened him that this was a token of safeguard from Jupiter, for which he organized due measures of recognition, thus bringing the plague at an immediate end. This shield became a sacred relic of the Romans and was placed in the care of the Salii.