So gratified were the people at the proposal that, not to appear
							behindhand in generosity, they passed a resolution that it should be
							left to the senate to decree who should reign in Rome . There Numa
								Pompilius elected King. was living, in those days, at Cures,
							a Sabine city, a man of
							renowned justice and piety-Numa Pompilius. He was as conversant as any
							one in that age could be with all divine and human law. His master is given as Pythagoras of Samos , as tradition speaks of no other. But this is
							erroneous, for it is generally agreed that it was more than a century
							later, in the reign of Servius Tullius, that Pythagoras gathered round
							him crowds of eager students, in the most distant part of Italy , in the neighbourhood of
								 Metapontum ,
								 Heraclea , and Crotona . Now, even if he had been contemporary with Numa, how could his
							reputation have reached the Sabines? From what places, and in what
							common language could he have induced any one to become his disciple?
							Who could have guaranteed the safety of a solitary individual travelling
							through so many nations differing in speech and character? I believe rather that Numa's virtues were the result of his native
							temperament and self-training, moulded not so much by foreign influences
							as by the rigorous and austere discipline of the ancient Sabines, which
							was the purest type of any that existed in the old days.