Having thus reigned in the greatest peace and concord thirty-nine years--for in dates we mainly follow our Polybius, than whom no one ever gave more attention to the investigation of the history of the times--he departed this life, having corroborated the two grand principles of political stability, religion and clemency.
XV.

When Scipio had concluded these remarks, Is it not, said Manilius, a true tradition which is current, that our king Numa was a disciple of Pythagoras himself, or that at least he was a Pythagorean in his doctrines?
For I have often heard this from my elders, and we know that it is the popular opinion; but it does not seem to be clearly proved by the testimony of our public annals.
Then Scipio replied: The supposition is false, my Manilius; it is not merely a fiction, but a ridiculous and bungling one too; and we should not tolerate those statements, even in fiction, relating to facts which not only did not happen, but which never could have happened.

For it was not till the fourth year of the reign of Tarquinius Superbus that Pythagoras is ascertained to have come to Sybaris, Crotona, and this part of Italy.

And the sixty-second Olympiad is the common date of the elevation of Tarquin to the throne, and of the arrival of Pythagoras.
From which it appears, when we calculate the duration of the reigns of the kings, that about one hundred and forty years must have elapsed after the death of Numa before Pythagoras first arrived in Italy.

And this fact, in the minds of men who have carefully studied the annals of time, has never been at all doubted.
O ye immortal Gods! said Manilius, how deep and how inveterate is this error in the minds of men! However, it costs me no effort to concede that our Roman sciences were not imported from beyond the seas, but that they sprung from our own indigenous and domestic virtues.
XVI.