Tag: Numa Pompilius

I’m working my way through Plutarch’s Lives (or Parallel Lives, if you like). I decided not to challenge myself to blog about it, the way I did with Montaigne, because I didn’t like the way that made me rush through some of the essays in an attempt to compress/distill them. I’m still glad I made my way through his work, but I need to revisit many of them. With Plutarch, I’ll share what I can, but I make no promises.

Anyway, while reading the life of Numa Pompilius, the successor to Romulus as king of Rome, I came across this wonderful passage:

To the god Terminus, or Boundary, they offer to this day both public and private sacrifices, upon the borders and stone-marks of their land; living victims now, though anciently those sacrifices were solemnized without blood; for Numa reasoned that the god of boundaries, who watched over peace, and testified to fair dealing, should have no concern with blood.

It is very clear that it was this king who first prescribed bounds to the territory of Rome; for Romulus would but have openly betrayed how much he had encroached on his neighbors’ lands, had he ever set limits to his own; for boundaries are, indeed, a defense to those who choose to observe them, but are only a testimony against the dishonesty of those who break them.