whom he married after he became king. All, however, agree that Pompilia
married Marcius, the son of that Marcius who encouraged Numa to accept
the crown. This man accompanied Numa to Rome, was made a member of the
Senate, and after Numa's death laid claim to the crown, but was worsted
by Tullus Hostilius and made away with himself. His son Marcius, who
married Pompilia, remained in Rome, and became the father of Ancus
Marcius, who was king after Tullus Hostilius, and who was only five
years old when Numa died.

We are told by Piso that Numa died, not by a sudden death, but by slow
decay from sheer old age, having lived a little more than eighty years.

XXII. He was enviable even in death, for all the friendly and allied
nations assembled at his funeral with national offerings. The senators
bore his bier, which was attended by the chief priests, while the crowd
of men, women and children who were present, followed with such weeping
and wailing, that one would have thought that, instead of an aged king,
each man was about to bury his own dearest friend, who had died in the
prime of life. At his own wish, it is said, the body was not burned, but
placed in two stone coffins and buried on the Janiculum Hill. One of
these contained his body, and the other the sacred books which he
himself had written, as Greek legislators write their laws upon tablets.
During his life he had taught the priests the contents of these books,
and their meaning and spirit, and ordered them to be buried with his
corpse, because it was right that holy mysteries should be contained,
not in soulless writings, but in the minds of living men. For the same
reason they say that the Pythagoreans never reduced their maxims to
writing, but implanted them in the memories of worthy men; and when some
of their difficult processes in geometry were divulged to some unworthy
men, they said that Heaven would mark its sense of the wickedness which
had been committed by some great public calamity; so that, as Numa's
system so greatly resembled that of Pythagoras, we can easily pardon
those who endeavour to establish a connection between them.

Valerius of Antium says that twelve sacred books and twelve books of
Greek philosophy were placed in the coffin. Four hundred years
afterwards, when Publius Cornelius and Marcus Baebius were consuls, a
great fall of rain took place, and the torrent washed away the earth and
exposed the coffins. When the lids were removed, one