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And in truth, it is generally agreed that a marvellous good Fortune guided the reign of Numa which endured for so many years. Cf. Life of Numa, chap. iv. (61 f ff.); Livy, i. 19. 5, 21. 3; Ovid, Metamorphoses, xv. 487; Fasti, iii. 261 ff.; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, ii. 60. 5. For the tale that a certain Egeria, a dryad and a wise divinity, consorted in love with the man, and helped him in instituting and shaping the government of his State, Cf. Life of Numa, chap. iv. (62 a). is perhaps somewhat fabulous. For other mortals who are said to have attained divine marriages and to have been beloved of goddesses, men like Peleus and Anchises, Orion and Emathion, by no means lived through their lives in a satisfactory, or even painless, manner. On the contrary, it appears likely that Numa had Good Fortune as his true wife, counsellor, and colleague; and she took the city in charge when it was being carried hither and yon amid the enmity and fierceness of bordering tribes and neighbours, as in the midst of turbulent billows of a troubled sea and was inflamed by countless struggles and dissensions; and she calmed those opposing passions and jealousies as though they had been but gusts of wind. Even as they relate that the sea, when it has received the brood of halcyons in the stormy season, keeps them safe and assists in their nurture, even such a calm in the affairs of Rome, free from war or pestilence or danger or terror, Fortune caused to overspread and surround the city, and thus afforded the opportunity to a newly settled and sorely shaken people to take root and to establish their city on a firm foundation where it might grow in quiet, securely and unhindered. It is as with a merchantman or a trireme, which is constructed by blows and with great violence, and is buffeted by hammers and nails, bolts and saws and axes, and, when it is completed, it must remain at rest and grow firm for a suitable period of time until its bonds hold tight and its fastenings have acquired affinity; but if it be launched while its joinings are still damp and slippery, these will all be loosened when they are racked by the waves, and will admit the sea. Even so the first ruler and artificer of Rome, in organizing the city from rustics and shepherds, as though building up from a stout keel,Is this a reminiscence of Plato, Timaeus, 81 b; or of Polybius, i. 38. 5? took upon himself no few labours, nor of slight moment were the wars and dangers that he withstood in warding off, of necessity, those who opposed the creation and foundation of Rome.
