ordered to be burned, in order that the causes of sacred rites
therein assigned should not become known._.
But, on the other hand, we find, as the same most learned man has
related, that the causes of the sacred rites which were given from
the books of Numa Pompilius could by no means be tolerated, and were
considered unworthy, not only to become known to the religious by
being read, but even to lie written in the darkness in which they had
been concealed. For now let me say what I promised in the third book
of this work to say in its proper place. For, as we read in the same
Varro's book on the worship of the gods, "A certain one Terentius had
a field at the Janiculum, and once, when his ploughman was passing
the plough near to the tomb of Numa Pompilius, he turned up from the
ground the books of Numa, in which were written the causes of the
sacred institutions; which books he carried to the prætor, who, having
read the beginnings of them, referred to the senate what seemed to
be a matter of so much importance. And when the chief senators had
read certain of the causes why this or that rite was instituted, the
senate assented to the dead Numa, and the conscript fathers, as though
concerned for the interests of religion, ordered the prætor to burn
the books."[288] Let each one believe what he thinks; nay, let every
champion of such impiety say whatever mad contention may suggest. For
my part, let it suffice to suggest that the causes of those sacred
things which were written down by King Numa Pompilius, the institutor
of the Roman rites, ought never to have become known to people or
senate, or even to the priests themselves; and also that Numa himself
attained to these secrets of demons by an illicit curiosity, in order
that he might write them down, so as to be able, by reading, to be
reminded of them. However, though he was king, and had no cause to
be afraid of any one, he neither dared to teach them to any one, nor
to destroy them by obliteration, or any other form of destruction.
Therefore, because he was unwilling that any one should know them,
lest men should be taught infamous things, and because he was afraid
to violate them, lest he should enrage the demons against himself, he
buried them in what he thought a safe place, believing that a plough
could not approach his sepulchre. But the senate, fearing to condemn
the religious solemnities of their ancestors, and therefore compelled
to assent to Numa, were nevertheless so convinced that those books were
pernicious, that they did not order them to be buried again, knowing
that human curiosity would thereby be excited to seek with far greater
eagerness after the matter already divulged, but ordered the scandalous
relics to be destroyed with fire; because, as they thought it was now
a necessity to perform those sacred rites, they judged that the error
arising from ignorance of their causes was more tolerable than the
disturbance which the knowledge of them would occasion the state.