Numa Pompilius

Numa Pompilius was the legendary second king of Rome. Roman tradition credited him with religious institutions, priesthoods and a peaceful ordering of civic life after the martial reign of Romulus.

Ancient Roman writers contrasted Numa’s peaceful reign with the warfare of Romulus and credited him with establishing priesthoods, rituals, the calendar and institutions that regulated relations between Rome and the gods. Much of this material is legendary rather than recoverable biography, but the tradition was politically important. Roman authors used Numa to explain the antiquity of religious practices and to imagine an ideal ruler governed by law and piety.

Livy’s History of Rome presents Numa Pompilius as Rome’s second king and the peaceful counterpart to the warrior-founder Romulus. Livy credits him with organising major religious offices, rites and calendars, making Numa a vehicle for later Roman ideas about how sacred law, civic discipline and institutions transformed a community founded through violence into an ordered state.