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While Romulus reigned, Thales the Milesian is said to have lived,
being one of the seven sages, who succeeded the theological poets, of
whom Orpheus was the most renowned, and were called Sofoi, that is,
sages. During that time the ten tribes, which on the division of the
people were called Israel, were conquered by the Chaldeans and led
captive into their lands, while the two tribes which were called
Judah, and had the seat of their kingdom in Jerusalem, remained in
the land of Judea. As Romulus, when dead, could nowhere be found,
the Romans, as is everywhere notorious, placed him among the gods, a
thing which by that time had already ceased to be done, and which was
not done afterwards till the time of the Caesars, and then not through
error, but in flattery; so that Cicero ascribes great praises to
Romulus, because he merited such honors not in rude and unlearned
times, when men were easily deceived, but in times already polished
and learned, although the subtle and acute loquacity of the
philosophers had not yet culminated. But although the later times did
not deify dead men, still they did not cease to hold and worship as
gods those deified of old; nay, by images, which the ancients never
had, they even increased the allurements of vain and impious
superstition, the unclean demons effecting this in their heart, and
also deceiving them by lying oracles, so that even the fabulous crimes
of the gods, which were not once imagined by a more polite age, were
yet basely acted in the plays in honor of these same false deities.
Numa reigned after Romulus; and although he had thought that Rome
would be better defended the more gods there were, yet on his death he
himself was not counted worthy of a place among them, as if it were
supposed that he had so crowded heaven that a place could not be found
for him there. They report that the Samian sibyl lived while he
reigned at Rome, and when Manasseh began to reign over the Hebrews,
an impious king, by whom the prophet Isaiah is said to have been
slain.
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