Numa Pompilius

Also known as: Numa · Family: Sabine · Role: king of Rome · First appears: Numa Pompilius

Numa Pompilius was the youngest of four sons of Pomponius, an illustrious Sabine father. Tatius, the colleague of Romulus, chose him as a son-in-law and gave him his only daughter, Tatia. After Romulus’s reign, Numa accepted the Roman kingdom; Proculus and Velesus had been considered possible choices, but Spurius Vettius put Numa’s election to the vote, and the people declared him king.

As king, Numa established the Pontifices and became their first priest, organized Rome’s people into trade guilds, and reformed the calendar by adding an intercalary month every other year. His reign brought forty-three years without war: “those gates were never seen open a single day.” He was also associated with Mamurius Veturius, whom he employed to reproduce a sacred target, and with Egeria, Jupiter, Picus, and Faunus in accounts of divine encounters and religious traditions.

Numa was said to have had only one daughter, Pompilia, though another tradition gave him four sons—Pompo, Pinus, Calpus, and Mamercus. Pompilia married Marcius, whose son was Ancus Marcius, later king after Tullus Hostilius. Numa lived for more than eighty years and died of old age through “a gradual and gentle decline.”