15.5
Some, however, say that it was not the imps themselves who imparted the charm, but that they called Jupiter down from heaven by their magic, and that this deity angrily told Numa that he must charm thunder and lightning with heads. Of onions? asked Numa, filling out the phrase. Of men, said Jupiter. Thereupon Numa, trying once more to avert the horror of the prescription, asked, with hair? Nay, answered Jupiter, with living— sprats? added Numa, as he had been taught by Egeria to say.
15.6
Then the god returned to heaven in a gracious mood,— hileos, as the Greeks say,—and the place was called Ilicium from this circumstance; and that is the way the charm was perfected. These stories, fabulous and ridiculous as they are, show us the attitude which the men of that time, from force of custom, took towards the gods. And Numa himself, as they say, had such implicit confidence in the gods, that once, when a message was brought to him that enemies were coming up against the city, he smiled and said: But I am sacrificing.
