Numa (1.1-1.2)

There is likewise[*] a vigorous dispute about the time at which King Numa lived, although from the beginning down to him the genealogies seem to be made out accurately. But a certain Clodius, in a book entitled An Examination of Chronology, insists that the ancient records were lost when the city was sacked by the Gauls,[*] and that those which are now exhibited as such were forged, their compilers wishing to gratify the pride of certain persons by inserting their names among the first families and the most illustrious houses, where they had no cause to appear.

Accordingly, when it is said that Numa was an intimate friend of Pythagoras, some deny utterly that Numa had any Greek culture, holding either that he was naturally capable of attaining excellence by his own efforts, or that the culture of the king was due to some Barbarian superior to Pythagoras. Others say that Pythagoras the philosopher lived as many as five generations after Numa,