Numa was the second king of Rome: and, the object of Romulus having
been to render his people soldiers and invincible in war, Numa, an old
man and a philosopher, made it his purpose to civilise them, and
deeply to imbue them with sentiments of religion. He appears to have
imagined the thing best calculated to accomplish this purpose, was to
lead them by prodigies and the persuasion of an intercourse with the
invisible world. A shield fell from heaven in his time, which he
caused to be carefully kept and consecrated to the Gods; and he
conceived no means so likely to be effectual to this end, as to make
eleven other shields exactly like the one which had descended by
miracle, so that, if an accident happened to any one, the Romans might
believe that the one given to them by the divinity was still in their
possession.[106]
Numa gave to his people civil statutes, and a code of observances in
matters of religion; and these also were inforced with a divine
sanction. Numa met the goddess Egeria from time to time in a cave; and
by her was instructed in the institutions he should give to the Romans:
and this barbarous people, awed by the venerable appearance of their
king, by the sanctity of his manners, and still more by the divine
favour which was so signally imparted to him, received his mandates
with exemplary reverence, and ever after implicitly conformed
themselves to all that he had suggested. [107]