XXI.  Historians differ in their accounts of his wives and children.  Some say that he married Tatia alone, and was the father of one daughter only, named Pompilia; but others, besides her, assign to him four sons, named Pompo, Pinus, Calpus, and Mamercus, from whom descended the four noble families of the Pomponii, Pinarii, Calphurnii, and Mamerci, which for this reason took the title of Rex, that is, king.  Others again say that these pedigrees were invented to flatter these families, and state that the Pompilian family descends not from Tatia, but from Lucretia, whom he married after he became king.  All, however, agree that Pompilia married Marcius, the son of that Marcius who encouraged Numa to accept the crown.  This man accompanied Numa to Rome, was made a member of the Senate, and after Numa’s death laid claim to the crown, but was worsted by Tullus Hostilius and made away with himself.  His son Marcius, who married Pompilia, remained in Rome, and became the father of Ancus Marcius, who was king after Tullus Hostilius, and who was only five years old when Numa died.

We are told by Piso that Numa died, not by a sudden death, but by slow decay from sheer old age, having lived a little more than eighty years.

XXII.  He was enviable even in death, for all the friendly and allied nations assembled at his funeral with national offerings.  The senators bore his bier, which was attended by the chief priests, while the crowd of men, women and children who were present, followed with such weeping and wailing, that one would have thought that, instead of an aged king, each man was about to bury his own dearest friend, who had died in the prime of life.  At his own wish, it is said, the body was not burned, but placed in two stone coffins and buried on the Janiculum Hill.  One of these contained his body, and the other the sacred books which he himself had written, as Greek legislators write their laws upon tablets.  During his life he had taught the priests the contents of these books, and their meaning and spirit, and ordered them to be buried with his corpse, because it was right that holy mysteries should be contained, not in soulless writings, but in the minds of living men.  For the same reason they say that the Pythagoreans never reduced their maxims to writing, but implanted them in the memories of worthy men; and when some of their difficult processes in geometry were divulged to some unworthy men, they said that Heaven would mark its sense of the wickedness which had been committed by some great public calamity; so that, as Numa’s system so greatly resembled that of Pythagoras, we can easily pardon those who endeavour to establish a connection between them.

Valerius of Antium says that twelve sacred books and twelve books of Greek philosophy were placed in the coffin.  Four hundred years afterwards, when Publius Cornelius and Marcus Baebius were consuls, a great fall of rain took place, and the torrent washed away the earth and exposed the coffins.  When the lids were removed, one of the coffins was seen by all men to be empty, and without any trace of a corpse in it; the other contained the books, which were read by Petilius the praetor, who reported to the Senate that in his opinion it was not right that their contents should be made known to the people, and they were therefore carried to the Comitium and burned there.