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.