Roman mythology is the body of traditional stories pertaining to ancient Rome's legendary origins and religious system, as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans.
The Romans usually treated their traditional narratives as histor...
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Numa Pompilius (753-673 BC; king of Rome, 715-673 BC) was an (almost certainly apocryphal) figure who served as the second king of Rome, succeeding Romulus. The main source of legends about him is Valerius Antias, an author from the early part of the 1st century BC who is himself only known through limited mentions of later authors Plutarch and Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus circa 60BC- later than 7 AD, hagiography-minded Livy (59 BC - 17 AD), critical history-minded Plutarch (approx 46 AD, approx 125 AD), poetry-inspired Ovid (43 BC, 17 AD).
According to Plutarch that Numa was the youngest of Pomponius' four sons, born on the day of Rome's founding (traditionally, 21 April 753 BC). He lived a severe life of discipline and banished all luxury from his home. Titus Tatius, king of the Sabines and a colleague of Romulus, gave in marriage his only daughter, Tatia, to Numa. After 13 years of marriage, Tatia died, precipitating Numa's retirement to the countryside. According to Livy, Numa resided at Cures immediately before being elected king.
Livy and Plutarch refer to and discredit the story that Numa was instructed in philosophy by Pythagoras, as chronologically implausible.
Plutarch reports that some authors credited him with only a single daughter, Pompilia, others also gave him five sons, Pompo (or Pomponius), Pinus, Calpus, Mamercus and Numa, from whom the noble families of the Pomponii, Pinarii, Calpurnii, Aemilii, and Pompilii respectively traced their descent. Other writers believed that this was merely a flattery invented to curry favour with those families. Pompilia, whose mother is variously identified as Numa's first wife Tatia or his second wife Lucretia, supposedly married the future first pontifex maximus Numa Marcius and by him gave birth to the future king, Ancus Marcius.
After the death of Romulus, there was an interregnum of one year in which the royal power was exercised by Senate members in rotation for five days in a row. In 715 BC after much bickering and as the result of a compromise between the Roman (Romulus-originating) and Sabine (Tatius-originating) factions, Numa, himself a Sabine, was elected by the Senate of Rome to be the next king.
According to Plutarch, Numa was a cunning and calculating person; he at first refused the offer, however his father and Sabine kinsmen, specifically his teacher and father of the husband of Numa' s own daughter, Marcus, and the Roman envoys (two senators) banded together to persuade him to accept. Plutarch and Livy recount how Numa, after being summoned by the Senate from Cures, and preferred the tokens of power within a popular surge of enthusiasm requested that prior to his acceptance an augur to divine the opinion of the gods on the prospect of his kingship should be taken. Jupiter was consulted and the omens were favorable. Thus placated by the Roman and Sabine people on the one hand and anointed by the heavens, he took up his position as King of Rome.
Roman Mythology
