When he had thus obtained the kingship, he1 prepared to give the
new City, founded by force of arms, a new foundation in law,
statutes, and observances. And perceiving that men could not
grow used to these things in the midst of wars, since their
natures grew wild and savage through warfare, he thought it
needful that his warlike people should be softened by the disuse
of arms, and built the temple of Janus at the bottom of the
Argiletum, as an index of peace and war, that when open it might
signify that the nation was in arms, when closed that all the
peoples round about were pacified. Twice since Numa's reign has
it been closed: once in the consulship of Titus Manlius, after
the conclusion of the First Punic War; the second time, which
the gods permitted our own generation to witness, was after the
battle of Actium, when the emperor Caesar Augustus had brought
about peace on land and [p. 69] Numa closed the temple after
first securing the3 good will of all the neighbouring tribes by
alliances and treaties.