 A third strand in Neopythagoreanism emphasizes Pythagoras’ practices rather than his supposed metaphysical system. This Pythagoras is an expert in religious and magical practices and/or a sage who lived the ideal moral life, upon whom we should model our lives. This strand is closely connected to the striking interest in and prominence of Pythagoreanism in Roman literature during the first century BCE and first century CE. Cicero (106–43 BCE) in particular refers to Pythagoras and other Pythagoreans with some frequency. In De Finibus (V 2), he presents himself as the excited tourist, who, upon his arrival in Metapontum in S. Italy and even before going to his lodgings, sought out the site where Pythagoras was supposed to have died. At the beginning of Book IV (1–2) of the Tusculan Disputations, Cicero notes that Pythagoras gained his fame in southern Italy at just the same time that L. Brutus freed Rome from the tyranny of the kings and founded the Republic; there is a clear implication that Pythagorean ideas, which reached Rome from southern Italy, had an influence on the early Roman Republic. Cicero goes on to assert explicitly that many Roman usages were derived from the Pythagoreans, although he does not give specifics. According to Cicero, it was admiration for Pythagoras that led Romans to suppose, without noticing the chronological impossibility, that the wisest of the early Roman kings, Numa, who was supposed to have ruled from 715–673 BCE, had been a pupil of Pythagoras.