16.4
Numa, therefore, administering agriculture to his citizens as a sort of peace-potion, and well pleased with the art as fostering character rather than wealth, divided the city’s territory into districts, to which he gave the name of pagi, and in each of them he set overseers and patrols. But sometimes he would inspect them in person, and judging of the characters of the citizens from the condition of their farms, would advance some to positions of honour and trust; while others, who were indolent and careless, he would chide and reproach, and so try to make them sensible.
17.1
But of all his measures, the one most admired was his distribution of the people into groups according to their trades or arts. For the city was supposed to consist of two tribes, as has been said, Chapter ii. 4 f. although it had no consistency, but was rather divided into two tribes, and utterly refused to become united, or to blot out its diversities and differences. On the contrary, it was filled with ceaseless collisions and contentions between its component parts. Numa, therefore, aware that hard substances which will not readily mingle may be crushed and pulverized, and then more easily mix and mingle with each other-owing to the smallness of their particles,
17.2
determined to divide the entire body of the people into a greater number of divisions, and so, by merging it in other distinctions, to obliterate the original and great distinction, which would be lost among the lesser ones. He distributed them, accordingly, by arts and trades, into musicians, goldsmiths, carpenters, dyers, leatherworkers, curriers, braziers, and potters. The remaining trades he grouped together, and made one body out of all who belonged to them.
