Numa had an inauspicious beginning. But the pathways of life are often unpredictable. As an adolescent his secret affection for a girl led to an incident that transformed his dreams of becoming a warrior into reality. Wherever he turned, fortune came his way. Was it the benevolence of the gods to whom he paid scant attention, of was something else guiding his life. In the violent world in which he lived, stories of a merciful and just God seemed too strange to believe. Yet Numa would encounter this foreign god in his greatest need.