1.19
Having in this way
obtained the crown, Numa prepared to found, as it
were, anew, by laws and customs, that City which had
so recently been founded by force of arms. He saw
that this was impossible whilst a state of war
lasted, for war brutalised men. Thinking that the
ferocity of his subjects might be mitigated by the
disuse of arms, he built the temple of Janus at the
foot of the Aventine as an index of peace and war,
to signify when it was open that the State was under
arms, and when it was shut that all the surrounding
nations were at peace. Twice since Numa's reign has
it been shut, once after the first Punic war in the
consulship of T. Manlius, the second time, which
heaven has allowed our generation to witness, after
the battle of Actium, when peace on land and sea was
secured by the emperor Caesar Augustus. After
forming treaties of alliance with all his neighbours
and closing the temple of Janus, Numa turned his
attention to domestic matters. The removal of all
danger from without would induce his subjects to
luxuriate in idleness, as they would be no longer
restrained by the fear of an enemy or by military
discipline. To prevent this, he strove to inculcate
in their minds the fear of the gods, regarding this
as the most powerful influence which could act upon
an uncivilised and, in those ages, a barbarous
people. But, as this would fail to make a deep
impression without some claim to supernatural
wisdom, he pretended that he had nocturnal
interviews with the nymph Egeria: that it was on her
advice that he was instituting the ritual most
acceptable to the gods and appointing for each deity
his own special priests. First of all he divided the
year into twelve months, corresponding to the moon's
revolutions. But as the moon does not complete
thirty days in each month, and so there are fewer
days in the lunar year than in that measured by the
course of the sun, he interpolated intercalary
months and so arranged them that every twentieth
year the days should coincide with the same position
of the sun as when they started, the whole twenty
years being thus complete. He also established a
distinction between the days on which legal business
could be transacted and those on which it could not,
because it would sometimes be advisable that there
should be no business transacted with the people.