ves and tell their
children after them that there is no power on earth so great that it
shall be able to stand against them.' And when he had thus spoken, he
departed from me going up into heaven." All men believed Proculus when
he thus spake, and the people ceased from their sorrow when they knew
that King Romulus had been taken up into heaven.

And now it was needful that another king should be chosen. No man in
those days was more renowned for his righteousness and piety than a
certain Numa Pompilius that dwelt at Cures in the land of the Sabines.
Now it seemed at first to the Senate that the Sabines would be too
powerful in the state if a king should be chosen from amongst them,
nevertheless because they could not agree upon any other man, at last
with one consent they decreed that the kingdom should be offered to him.
And Numa was willing to receive it if only the gods consented. And the
consent of the gods was asked in this fashion. Being led by the augur
into the citadel, he sat down on a stone, with his face looking towards
the south, and on his left hand sat the augur, having his head covered
and in his hand an augur's staff, which is a wand bent at the end and
having no knot. Then looking towards the city and the country round
about, he offered prayers to the Gods and marked out the region of the
sky from the sunrising to the sunsetting; the parts towards the south
he called the right, and the parts towards the north he called the left;
and he set a boundary before as far as his eye could reach. After this
he took his staff in his left hand and laid his right on the head of
Numa, praying in these words: "Father Jupiter, if it be thy will that
this Numa Pompilius, whose head I hold, should be King of Rome, show us,
I pray thee, clear tokens of this thy will within the space which I have
marked out." He then named the tokens which he desired, and when they
had been shown, Numa was declared to be King.

King Numa, considering that the city was but newly founded, and that by
violence and force, conceived that he ought to found it anew, giving it
justice and laws and religion; and that he might soften the manners and
tempers of the people, he would have them cease awhile from war. To this
end he built a temple of Janus, by which it might be signified whether
there was peace or war in the State; for, if it were peace, the gates
of the temple should be shut, but if it were war, they should be open.
Twice only were t