XII. “Wherefore,” said Scipio, “when the senate, which Romulus had instituted out of the better class, and which had been so much favoured by the king, as to cause them to be called fathers, and their children patricians; endeavoured after the death of Romulus, to carry on the government itself without any king; the people would not endure it, and in their regret for Romulus did not cease to demand a king. Upon which the leading men prudently imagined a mode of interregnum, new and unknown to other nations. So that until a regular king was proclaimed, neither the city should be without a king, nor with one too long a period. Fearing lest from too long an enjoyment of the government, the interrex should be reluctant to lay it down, or strong enough to maintain himself in it. Even in these times, this new people perceived what had escaped the Lacedemonian Lycurgus; who esteemed it best not to choose a king, if this were indeed in the power of Lycurgus to do, but rather to be governed by any one whatever descended from the race of Hercules. But our ancestors, rude as they appear to have been, thought it behoved them rather to look to royal wisdom and virtue, than to descent. XIII. When the great fame of Numa Pompilius had reached them, the people, leaving aside their own citizens, called in by the authority of the fathers, a king not born among them, and sent to the Curians for a Sabine to reign over Rome. When he arrived, although the people had decided that he should be king in the conventions of the curia, nevertheless he himself had a law passed in the curia concerning his own power; and as he saw the Romans through the institutions of Romulus were eager after warlike pursuits, he deemed it proper to wean them somewhat from that propensity.