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Updated: May 23, 2025
This morning's ramble let us to see the old grotto, sacred to Numa's famous nymph, Ægeria, not far from Rome even now. I wonder that it should escape being built round when Rome was so extensive as to contain the crowds which we are told were lodged in it. That the city spread chiefly the other way, is scarce an answer.
Numa's virtue made him so celebrated that he was judged worthy to be king, Lykurgus' made him so great that he did not care to be king. Again, like those who tune the strings of a lyre, Lykurgus drew tighter the relaxed and licentious Sparta, while Numa merely slackened the highly strung and warlike Rome, so that here Lykurgus had the more difficult task.
Numa, all his eyes for Taug, did not see the ape-man. Instead he shot forward after the fleeing bull, who had turned in flight not an instant too soon, since he reached the nearest tree but a yard or two ahead of the pursuing demon. Like a cat the heavy anthropoid scampered up the bole of his sanctuary. Numa's talons missed him by little more than inches.
Then the chief of the augurs covered Numa's head, and turned his face towards the south, and, standing behind him, laid his right hand on his head, and prayed, turning his eyes every way, in expectation of some auspicious signal from the gods.
Tarzan smiled. Presently he heard an animal approaching warily along the trail toward the drinking place. A moment more and it came in view it was Horta, the boar. Here was delicious meat and Tarzan's mouth watered. The grasses where Numa lay were very still now ominously still. Horta passed beneath Tarzan a few more steps and he would be within the radius of Numa's spring.
Tarzan recognized the ear-marks of the witch-doctor and awaited Numa's charge with a feeling of pleasurable anticipation, for the ape-man had no love for witch-doctors; but in the instant that Numa did charge, the white man suddenly recalled that the lion had stolen his kill a few minutes before and that revenge is sweet.
The stone bridge was built a very long time after, when Aemilius was quaestor, and they do, indeed, say also that the wooden bridge was not so old as Numa's time, but was finished by Ancus Marcius, when he was king, who was the grandson of Numa by his daughter.
No war, revolution, or political disturbance of any kind is recorded during Numa's reign, neither was there any envy or hatred of him or any attempt by others to obtain the crown; but either fear of the gods who visibly protected him, or reverence for his virtues, or the special grace of Heaven, made men's lives innocent and untainted with evil, and formed a striking proof of the truth of what Plato said many years afterwards, that the only escape from misery for men is when by Divine Providence philosophy is combined with royal power, and used to exalt virtue over vice.
Numa's whole time, therefore, was spent in inspiring his subjects with a love of piety, and a veneration for the gods. He built many new temples, instituted sacred offices and feasts; and the sanctity of his life gave strength to his assertion that he had a particular correspondence with the goddess Ege'ria.
That which was the aim and end of Numa's policy, that Rome should be at peace and friendly with her neighbours, ceased immediately upon his death; at once the double-gated temple, which he kept closed as if he really kept war locked up in it, had both its gates thrown open and filled Italy with slaughter.
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