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as consisting in the subjugation of our passions bv reason. He banished all luxury and softness from his own home, and, while citizens alike and strangers found in him an incorruptible judge and counsellor, in private he de- voted himself not to amusement or lucre, but to the wor- ship of the immortal gods, and the rational contemplation of their divine power and nature. So famous was he, that Tatius, the colleague of Romulus, chose him for his son-in-law, and gave him his only daughter, which, how- ever, did not- stimulate his vanity to desire to dwell with his father-in-law at Rome ; he rather chose to inhabit with his Sabines, and cherish his own father in his old age ; and Tatia, also, preferred the private condition of her hus- band before the honors and splendor she might have en- joyed with her father. She is said to have died after she had been married thirteen years, and then Numa, leaving the conversation of the town, betook himself to a country life, and in a solitary manner frequented the groves and fields consecrated to the gods, passing his life in desert places. And. this in particular gave occasion to the story about the goddess, namely, that Numa did not retire from human society out of any melancholy or disorder of mind, but because he had tasted the joys of more elevated in- tercourse, and, admitted to celestial wedlock in the love and converse of the goddess Egeria, had attained to bles- sedness, and to a divine wisdom. The story evidently resembles those very ancient fables which the Phrygians have received and still recount of Attis, the Bithynians of Herodotus, the Arcadians of En- dymion, not to mention several others who were thought blessed and beloved of the gods ; nor does it seem strange if God, a lover, not of horses or birds, but men, should not disdain to dwell with the virtuous and converse with the

wise and temperate soul, though it be altogether hard,