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.

His division was according to their trades, and consisted of the
musicians, the goldsmiths, the builders, the dyers, the shoemakers, the
carriers, the coppersmiths, and the potters. All the other trades he
united into one guild. He assigned to each trade its special privileges,
common to all the members, and arranged that each should have its own
times of meeting, and worship its own special patron god, and by this
means he did away with that habit, which hitherto had prevailed among
the citizens, of some calling themselves Sabines, and some Romans; one
boasting that they were Tatius's men, and other Romulus's. So this
division produced a complete fusion and unity. Moreover he has been much
praised for another of his measures, that, namely, of correcting the old
law which allows fathers to sell their sons for slaves. He abolished
this power in the case of married men, who had married with their
father's consent; for he thought it a monstrous injustice that a woman,
who had married a free man, should be compelled to be the wife of a
slave.

XVIII. He also dealt with astronomical matters, not with perfect
accuracy, and yet not altogether without knowledge. During the reign of
Romulus the months had been in a state of great disorder, some not
containing twenty days, some five-and-thirty, and some even more,
because the Romans could not reconcile the discrepancies which arise
from reckoning by the sun and the moon, and only insisted upon one
thing, that the year should consist of three hundre