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. [Illustration: Numa Pompilius remembering the Grotto.] Numa, though he had come to the throne, was fond of the retired walks of life, and frequently took a solitary stroll in the suburbs. During one of his rambles chance brought him to a grotto, and he was induced to remember the grotto by the surpassing loveliness of its fair inhabitant. Her name was Egeria, her profession that of a fortune-teller, which gave her such an influence over the superstitious mind of Numa, that she ruled him with her divining rod as completely as if it had been a rod of iron. He professed to act under the advice of this nymph, to whom tradition--an inveterate match-maker--has married him, and he instituted the Flamines, an order of priests, to give weight to the falsehoods or "flams" he thought fit to promulgate. The privileges of the Flamines were not altogether of the most comfortable kind, and consisted chiefly in the right of wearing the Apex--a cap made of olive wood--and the Laena, a sort of Roman wrap-rascal, shaggy on both sides, and worn above the toga, as an overcoat. The Flamen was prohibited from appearing in public without his Apex, which could not be kept on the head without strings; but such was the stringency of the regulations, that one Sulpicius[8] was deprived of his priesthood, in consequence of his official hat, which was as light as a modern zephyr, having been blown off his head in the midst of a sacrifice. Numa added, also, a sort of _ballet_ company to the mythological arrangements of his day, by establishing twelve _Salii_, or dancing priests, whose duty it was to execute a grand _pas de douze_ on certain occasions through the principal public thorough fares. The Salii, though a highly respectable, were not a very venerable order, for no one could remain in it whose father and mother were not both alive, the existence of the parents of the dancing priests being, no doubt, required as a guarantee that their dancing days were not yet over.