DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2014.v02i02.016

Pages: 243-246

Pagan religion in ancient Rome was well established and embeded into a bordered religious frame but “open” to new ideas and deities from other cultures (sometimes “weird” or exotic like Magna Mater, Isis, Mithras etc), adopted most of the times as local gods. Despite though this absorbing culture there has also been religions (like that of Bacchus) forbidden and characterized as superstitio. In the current work a systematically investigation on the story of burning of Numa’s books is presented. Motivation of this work was the understanding of the story itself and its causality. In order to do it, firstly some background information about Numa, Pythagoras and for the specific story is given, followed by a brief discussion on the sources (focusing mostly on their differences). Afterwards a critical literature review, identifying the different point of views scholars approach the issue, is provided. Further, a discussion on reasoning of that action is provided based both on scholar’s conclusions and on main source author’s personal beliefs. It is shown that some aspects of the story has not been clarified yet and it is very likely that the burning of that books was not only a “theological” action.