NUMA POMPILIUS.

Though the pedigrees of noble families of Rome go . back in exact form as far as Numa Pompilius, yet there is great diversity amongst historians concerning the time in which he reigned ; a certain writer called Clodius,* in a book of his entitled Strictures on Chronology, avers that the ancient registers of Rome were lost when the city was sacked by the Gauls, and that those which are now extant were counterfeited, to flatter and serve the humor of some men who wished to have themselves derived from some ancient and noble lineage, though in reality with no claim to it. And though it be commonly reported that Numa was a scholar and a familiar ac- quaintance of Pythagoras, yet it is again contradicted by others, who affirm, that he was acquainted with nei- ther the Greek language nor learning, and that he was a person of that natural talent and ability as of himself to attain to virtue, or else that he found some barbarian in- structor superior to Pythagoras. Some affirm, also, that Pythagoras was not contemporary with Numa, but lived at least five generations after him ; and that some other Py- thagoras, a native of Sparta, who, in the sixteenth Olym- piad, in the third year of which Numa became king, won a prize at the Olympic race, might, in his travel through

• Probably Claudius Quadrigarius.

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