 But the pontifical records of early Rome were most likely destroyed when the city was sacked by the Gauls in 387 BCE, and the earliest accounts of Archaic Rome come from the literature of the Republic, most of it from the 1st century BC and later.According to the Augustan-era historian Livy, Numa Pompilius, a Sabine, devised Rome's system of religious rites, including the manner and timing of sacrifices, the supervision of religious funds, authority over all public and private religious institutions, instruction of the populace in the celestial and funerary rites including appeasing the dead, and expiation of prodigies.Numa is said to have founded Roman religion after dedicating an altar on the Aventine Hill to Jupiter Elicius and consulting the gods by means of augury.