[6] The best derivation of the word curia is quiris, which, on inquiry, is found to correspond with curis.
[7] The word "client" is probably derived from cluere, to hear or obey—at all events cluere is the best clue we can give to the origin of the word in question.
CHAPTER THE SECOND.
FROM THE ACCESSION OF NUMA POMPILIUS TO THE DEATH OF ANCUS
MARTIUS.
omulus having been swamped in the marsh of Capra, or having disappeared down one of those drains, which have carried away into the great sea of conjecture so many of the facts of former ages, the senate put off from week to week, and from this day se'nnight to that day se'nnight the choice of a successor. The honourable members agreed to try their hands at Government by turns, and they took the sceptre for five days each by a constant rotation, which any wheel, and more particularly a commonwheal, was sure to suffer from. The people growing tired of this unprofitable game of fives, which threw everything into a state of sixes and sevens, clamoured so loudly to be reduced under one head, that permission was given them to elect a sovereign. Their choice fell upon Numa Pompilius, because he was born on the day of the foundation of the city; so that he may be said to have succeeded by birth to the berth of chief magistrate. Numa Pompilius was a Sabine, who we are told had been instructed by Pythagoras, and we should be happy to believe what we are told, if we did not happen to know that the sage belonged to quite a different time, having lived two hundred years later than the alleged existence of the pupil.
Before entering on his duties, the newly chosen king consulted the augurs, with one of whom he walked up to the Temple on the Saturnian Hill, where Numa, seated on a stone, looked to the south as far as he could see, in order to ascertain whether there was any impediment to his views and prospects. In the earliest periods of the history of Rome no office was undertaken without a consultation of the augurs, or auspices; and the continued use of these words affords proof of the ancient custom to which they relate; though inauguration now takes place under auspices of a very different character. The recognised signs of those times were only two, consisting of the lightning, by means of which the truth was supposed to flash across the augur's mind; and, secondly, the birds, who, by being consulted for something singular in their singing, or eccentric in their flying, might, had they known it, have fairly plumed themselves on the honours done to them. A crow on the left betokened that things were looking black, but the same bird on the right imparted to everything a brighter colour; and as these birds are in the habit of wandering right and left, the augurs could always declare there was something to be said on both sides.
Numa Pompilius was, according to all accounts, a just ruler, and he began his career in a ruler-like manner by drawing several straight lines about Rome, to mark its boundaries. He placed these under a deity, termed Terminus, and he erected twelve stones within a stone's throw of each other, at regular intervals along the frontier. These were visited once a year by twelve officers, called Fratres Arvales, appointed for the purpose, and the custom originated, no doubt, the parochial practice of perambulating parishes with wands and staves, placed in the hands of beadles, who not unfrequently add the luxury of beating the boys to the ceremony of beating the boundaries.