Four hundred years
afterwards, when Publius Cornelius and Marcus Baebius were consuls, a
great fall of rain took place, and the torrent washed away the earth and
exposed the coffins. When the lids were removed, one of the coffins was
seen by all men to be empty, and without any trace of a corpse in it;
the other contained the books, which were read by Petilius the praetor,
who reported to the Senate that in his opinion it was not right that
their contents should be made known to the people, and they were
therefore carried to the Comitium and burned there.
All good and just men receive most praise after their death, because
their unpopularity dies with them or even before them; but Numa's glory
was enhanced by the unhappy reigns of his successors. Of five kings who
succeeded him, the last was expelled and died an exile, and of the other
four, not one died a natural death, but three were murdered by
conspirators, and Tullus Hostilius, who was king next after Numa, and
who derided and insulted his wise ordinances, especially those
connected with religion, as lazy and effeminate, and who urged the
people to take up arms, was cut down in the midst of his boastings by a
terrible disease, and became subject to superstitious fears in no way
resembling Numa's piety. His subjects were led to share these terrors,
more especially by the manner of his death, which is said to have been
by the stroke of a thunderbolt.
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