Valerius Antias

Shrine of the nymph Egeria, Caffarella Park, Rome. Numa Pompilius consulted her frequently, but on the early Aventine. The life of Numa was of extensive interest to Antias. In Fragment 6 (Plutarch, Numa, 15 and elsewhere) following the nymph's advice he summons Jupiter from heaven and forces him to accept a remedy of onion and fish heads to counter the effects of a lightning strike, instead of the human heads proposed by the god. Livy ignores the story.[1]
Numa Pompilius consulting Egeria.

Valerius Antias (fl. 1st century BC) was an ancient Roman annalist whom Livy mentions as a source. No complete works of his survive but from the sixty-five fragments said to be his in the works of other authors it has been deduced that he wrote a chronicle of ancient Rome in at least seventy-five books.[2] The latest dateable event in the fragments is mention of the heirs of the orator, Lucius Licinius Crassus, who died in 91 BC. Of the seventy references to Antias in classical (Greek and Latin) literature sixty-one mention him as an authority on Roman legendary history.

  1. ^ Howard (1906), p. 163.
  2. ^ Howard (1906), p. 161.