[Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations by Marcus Tullius Cicero]@TWC D-Link bookCicero’s Tusculan Disputations BOOK II 13/43
Numa, although the people had proclaimed him king in their Comitia Curiata, did nevertheless himself pass a Lex Curiata respecting his own authority; and observing that the institutions of Romulus had too much excited the military propensities of the people, he judged it expedient to recall them from this habit of warfare by other employments. XIV.
And, in the first place, he divided severally among the citizens the lands which Romulus had conquered, and taught them that even without the aid of pillage and devastation they could, by the cultivation of their own territories, procure themselves all kinds of commodities.
And he inspired them with the love of peace and tranquillity, in which faith and justice are likeliest to flourish, and extended the most powerful protection to the people in the cultivation of their fields and the enjoyment of their produce.
Pompilius likewise having created hierarchical institutions of the highest class, added two augurs to the old number.
He intrusted the superintendence of the sacred rites to five pontiffs, selected from the body of the nobles; and by those laws which we still preserve on our monuments he mitigated, by religious ceremonials, the minds that had been too long inflamed by military enthusiasm and enterprise. He also established the Flamines and the Salian priests and the Vestal Virgins, and regulated all departments of our ecclesiastical policy with the most pious care.
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