14.3
Many of his other precepts also resembled those of the Pythagoreans. For instance, the Pythagoreans said: Don’t use a quart-measure as a seat; Don’t poke the fire with a sword; When you set out for foreign parts, don’t turn back; and To the celestial gods sacrifice an odd number, but an even number to the terrestrial; and the meaning of all these precepts they would keep hidden from the vulgar. So in some of Numa’s rules the meaning is hidden; as, for instance, Don’t offer to the gods wine from unpruned vines; Don’t make a sacrifice without meal; Turn round as you worship; and Sit down after worship.
14.4
The first two rules would seem to teach that the subjection of the earth is a part of religion; and the worshippers’ turning round is said to be an imitation of the rotary motion of the universe; but I would rather think that the worshipper who enters a temple, since temples face the east and the Sun, has his back towards the sunrise, and therefore turns himself half round in that direction, and then wheels fully round to face the god of the temple, thus making a complete circle, and linking the fulfilment of his prayer with both deities;
14.5
unless, indeed, this change of posture, like the Aegyptian wheels, darkly hints and teaches that there is no stability in human affairs, but that we must accept contentedly whatever twists and turns our lives may receive from the Deity. And as for the sitting down after worship, we are told that it is an augury of the acceptance of the worshipper’s prayers and the duration of his blessings. We are also told, that, as different acts are separated by an interval of rest,
