ollege, which, when there was no king,
undertook the government, one after another, each for five days, but in
such a manner that they always succeeded one another in the same order,
as we must believe with Livy, for Dionysius here introduces his Greek
notions of the Attic _prytanes_, and Plutarch misunderstands the matter
altogether.

After the example of the senate the number of the augurs and pontiffs
also was doubled, so that each college consisted of four members, two
being taken from the Ramnes and two from the Tities. Although it is not
possible to fix these changes chronologically, as Dionysius and Cicero
do, yet they are as historically certain as if we actually knew the
kings who introduced them.

Such was Rome in the second stage of its development. This period of
equalization is one of peace, and is described as the reign of Numa,
about whom the traditions are simple and brief. It is the picture of a
peaceful condition with a holy man at the head of affairs, like Nicolas
von der Flue in Switzerland. Numa was supposed to have been inspired by
the goddess.

Egeria, to whom he was married in the grove of the Camenae, and who
introduced him into the choir of her sisters; she melted away in tears
at his death, and thus gave her name to the spring which arose out of
her tears. Such a peace of forty years, during which no nation rose
against Rome, because Numa's piety was communicated to the surrounding
nations, is a beautiful idea, but historically impossible in those
times, and manifestly a poetical fiction.

The death of Numa forms the conclusion of the first _saeculum_, and an
entirely new period follows, just as in the Theogony of Hesiod the age
of heroes is followed by the iron age; there is evidently a change, and
an entirely new order of things is conceived to have arisen. Up to this
point we have had nothing except poetry, but with Tullus Hostilius a
kind of history begins, that is, events are related which must be taken
in general as historical, though in the light in which they are
presented to us they are not historical. Thus, for example, the
destruction of Alba is historical, and so in all probability is the
reception of the Albans at Rome. The conquests of Ancus Martius are
quite credible; and they appear like an oasis of real history in the
midst of fables. A similar case occurs once in the chronicle of Cologne.
In the Abyssinian annals, we find in the thirteenth century a very
minute account o