Numa

On this account he banished from his house all luxury and extravagance, and while citizen and stranger alike found in him a faultless judge and counsellor, he devoted his hours of privacy and leisure, not to enjoyments and money-making, but to the service of the gods, and the rational contemplation of their nature and power. In consequence he had a great name and fame, so that Tatius, the royal colleague of Romulus at Rome, made him the husband of his only daughter, Tatia.

He was not, however, so exalted by his marriage as to go to dwell with his royal father-in-law, but remained among the Sabines ministering to his aged father. Tatia, too, preferred the quiet life which her husband led as a private citizen to the honour and fame which she had enjoyed at Rome because of her father. But she died, as we are told, in the thirteenth year after her marriage.

Then Numa, forsaking the ways of city folk, determined to live for the most part in country places, and to wander there alone, passing his days in groves of the gods, sacred meadows, and solitudes. This, more than anything else, gave rise to the story about his goddess. It was not, so the story ran, from any distress or aberration of spirit that he forsook the ways of men, but he had tasted the joy of more august companionship

and had been honoured with a celestial marriage; the goddess Egeria loved him and bestowed herself upon him, and it was his communion with her that gave him a life of blessedness and a wisdom more than human. However, that this story resembles many of the very ancient tales which the Phrygians have received and cherished concerning Attis, the Bithynians concerning Herodotus, the Arcadians concerning Endymion, and other peoples concerning other mortals who were thought to have achieved a life of blessedness in the love of the gods, is quite evident.

And there is some reason in supposing that Deity, who is not a lover of horses or birds, but a lover of men, should be willing to consort with men of superlative goodness, and should not dislike or disdain the company of a wise and holy man. But that an immortal god should take carnal pleasure in a mortal body and its beauty, this, surely, is hard to believe.