Book 4

1.1. King Tarquinius, having proved the author of no small nor few benefits to the Romans, after holding the sovereignty thirty-eight years thus died, leaving two grandsons who were still infants and two daughters already married to men. His successor in the rule was his son-in-law Tullius, in the fourth year of the fiftieth Olympiad, the one in which Epitelides the Laconian won the foot-race, Archestratides being archon at Athens. It is now the proper time to relate the things I passed over at the outset concerning him: from what parents he was sprung, and what deeds he performed while still a private citizen and before he came to the sovereignty.

1.2. The account given of his lineage, the one to which I myself most of all subscribe, is as follows. In Corniculum, a city of the Latin nation, a certain man of the royal family, Tullius by name, was wedded to Ocrisia, the fairest and most virtuous of the women in Corniculum. When the city was taken by the Romans, this Tullius was slain fighting, and Ocrisia, who was with child, was chosen out of the spoils by King Tarquinius and given as a gift to his own wife. She, learning everything concerning the woman, not long afterwards set her free, and continued to cherish and honour her above all women.

1.3. From this Ocrisia, while she was still a slave, a child was born, to whom, when he had been reared, his mother gave the proper and family name Tullius, after his father, but the common and appellative name Servius, after her own fortune, because she had borne him while in servitude. Servius, if rendered into the Greek tongue, would be Doulios.

2.1. There is also another account preserved in the local records concerning his birth, one that exalts the circumstances of his life into the realm of the marvellous, which I have found in many Roman histories — if indeed such a tale is acceptable to gods and divinities. It tells that from the hearth of the palace, on which the Romans perform other sacred rites and consecrate the first portions of their meals, there rose up above the fire the privy member of a man; and that Ocrisia was the first to behold it, as she was carrying the customary cakes to the fire, and that she at once went and told the king and queen.

2.2. Tarquinius, on hearing it and afterwards seeing the prodigy, was filled with wonder; but Tanaquil, who besides her general wisdom was inferior to none of the Tyrrhenians in her knowledge of divination, told him that it was fated for an offspring greater than mortal nature to spring from the royal hearth out of the woman who should be united with the apparition. And when the other interpreters of prodigies declared the same, the king resolved that Ocrisia, to whom the prodigy had first appeared, should be united with it; and thereupon the woman, adorned as brides are wont to be adorned, was shut up alone in the room in which the prodigy had been seen.

2.3. One of the gods or lesser divinities, then, having lain with her and afterwards vanished — whether it was Vulcan, as some suppose, or the tutelary hero of the house — she conceived and bore Tullius at the appointed time. This tale, which does not seem altogether worthy of belief, is rendered less incredible by another divine manifestation, marvellous and astonishing, that occurred concerning the man.

2.4. For once, when he was lying in the colonnade of the palace asleep about midday, a fire shone out about his head; and his mother and the king's wife, as they were passing through the colonnade, beheld it, as did all who chanced to be present with the women at the time; and the flame continued to play about his whole head until his mother ran up and roused him, whereupon the flame, dispersed together with his sleep, vanished away. Such, then, are the accounts given concerning his birth.

3.1. The deeds worthy of record which he performed before becoming king — those by which Tarquinius came to admire him and the Roman people deemed him worthy of the honour next to the king — were as follows. While still a stripling he was enrolled among the cavalry in the first campaign which Tarquinius made against the Tyrrhenians, and he was thought to have fought so well that he immediately became famous and was the first of all to receive the prize for valour. Then, when another expedition was made against the same nation and a hard-fought battle took place near the city of Eretum, he showed himself the bravest of all and was again honoured by the king with crowns for valour.

3.2. When he was about twenty years of age he was appointed commander of the auxiliary force which the Latins sent, and he helped King Tarquinius to gain the dominion of the Tyrrhenians. In the first war against the Sabines also, being appointed commander of the horse, he routed the enemy's cavalry, and pursuing them as far as the city of Antemnae, won the prize for valour from that battle as well; and in many other battles which he fought against the same nation, sometimes leading the horse and sometimes the foot, he showed himself in all of them the bravest in spirit and was crowned before the rest.

3.3. And when that nation came to the point of submitting to the Romans and surrendering their cities, he was thought to have been the chief cause of this acquisition to Tarquinius and was crowned by him with the crowns of victory. He was, moreover, most sagacious in matters of statecraft, inferior to none in setting forth in speech the things resolved upon, and most able to accommodate himself to every fortune and to assimilate himself to every kind of person.

3.4. For these reasons the Romans saw fit to transfer him from the plebeians to the patricians by their vote, as they had earlier done with Tarquinius and, before him, with Numa Pompilius; and the king made him his kinsman by betrothing to him one of his daughters, and entrusted to him the performance of all those things which through sickness or old age he himself was unable to carry out, committing to his charge not only his own household but also the public affairs of the city. In all of these he was found faithful and just, and the commons thought it made no difference whether Tarquinius or Tullius had charge of the public business: so thoroughly had he won them over by his benefactions.

4.1. This man, then, having been endowed by nature with a character sufficiently equipped for command, and having received from Fortune many great occasions, when it came to pass that Tarquinius died, the victim of a plot by the sons of Ancus Marcius who wished to recover their father's sovereignty — as I have related in the preceding Book — and being thought to be summoned to the kingship by the very circumstances, he, being a man of action, did not let the opportunity slip from his hands.

4.2. She who helped him to establish his sovereignty and was the author of all his blessings was the wife of the deceased king, both because she was assisting her own son-in-law and because she knew from many oracles that it was fated for that man to reign over the Romans. It happened that a young son of hers had died not long before, leaving behind two infant children by him.

4.3. Reflecting upon the desolation of the house and being greatly afraid lest the Marcii, if they seized the rule, should destroy the children and blot out the whole royal kin, she first gave orders that the doors of the palace be shut and set guards over them with instructions to let no one pass either in or out. Then, ordering all the others to leave the chamber in which they had laid Tarquinius half-dead, and detaining only Ocrisia and Tullius and her daughter, who was wedded to Tullius, and ordering the children to be brought in by their nurses, she said to them:

4.4. "Our king Tarquinius, Tullius — he with whom you found nurture and education, and who honoured you above all his friends and kinsmen — having suffered impious treatment, has fulfilled his destiny without making any disposition concerning his private affairs or giving any charge concerning the public and political ones; indeed, he was not even able to greet any of us or to address us with his last farewells. These poor children are left desolate and orphaned, running no slight risk for their very lives. For if the affairs of the city fall to the Marcii who slew their grandfather, they will be destroyed by them in the most pitiable manner; nor will life be safe for you, to whom Tarquinius betrothed his daughters, slighting those men, if his murderers gain the rule; nor for his other friends and kinsmen, nor for us wretched women; but they will try to destroy us all, openly and by stealth.

4.5. Reflecting upon these things, then, we must not look on while these impious men who slew him, the enemies of us all, acquire so great a dominion; rather we must oppose and prevent them — for the present using craft and guile, for that is what the present moment requires; but when our first measures have prospered according to our purpose, then meeting them openly with all our force and with arms, if indeed there be need of that too. But there will be no need, if we are willing now to do what must be done.

4.6. And what is this? First, let us conceal the death of the king and contrive that it be given out to all that he has received no mortal wound, and let the physicians say that they will show him recovered within a few days. Then I will come forth into public view and tell the multitude that Tarquinius has charged me to say this: that, until he himself recovers from his wounds, he appoints as overseer and guardian of all things, both private and public, one of his sons-in-law — naming you, Tullius. And this will not be against the Romans' will; rather they will desire that the city be administered by you, by whom

4.7. it has often already been administered before. And when we have dispelled the present danger — for none of our enemies is any longer strong, so long as the king is reported to live — do you, taking the rods and the authority over arms, summon before the people those who plotted to slay Tarquinius, beginning with the sons of Marcius, and bring them to trial. After punishing all these — with death, if they submit to the trials; with perpetual exile and confiscation of their property, if they leave the cases undefended, which I think they are the more likely to do — set in order the affairs of the rule, winning over the multitude by humane intercourse, taking great care that no act of injustice be committed, and drawing to yourself the poorer citizens by certain benefits and gifts. Then, when it seems to us the right moment, let us announce that

4.8. Tarquinius is dead and conduct his funeral openly. It is your duty, Tullius — you who were reared by us and educated and have shared in all the good things which sons receive from a mother and father, and who are wedded to our daughter — if indeed you are to become king of the Romans, with me too contending at your side toward this end, to show a father's goodwill toward these children; and when they come to manhood and become capable of conducting public affairs, to declare the elder of them ruler of the Romans."

5.1. Having said this and having cast each of the children into the arms of her son-in-law and her daughter, and having stirred up much pity in both, when the moment came she went out of the chamber and ordered those within to make ready the things needful for the treatment and to call together the physicians. Then, letting the intervening night pass, on the following day, when a great crowd had run together to the palace, she came forth into public view, taking her stand at the windows that looked out upon the lane before the doors. First she pointed out to those present the men who had plotted the murder against the king, and brought forward in chains those who had been sent by

5.2. them to do the deed. Then, when she saw that many were lamenting the calamity and were filled with hatred of the perpetrators, she ended by telling them that nothing had come of the impious designs of the men, since they had not been able to kill Tarquinius. And when all received the news with gladness, she then commended Tullius to them as one appointed by the king to be overseer of all things, both private and public, until he himself should recover.

5.3. The people, then, departed full of joy that the king had suffered no terrible harm, and for a long time they continued to hold this belief. Tullius, having a strong band about him and bringing with him the royal lictors, came forth into the Forum and made proclamation that the Marcii should appear to stand trial; and when they did not obey, he proclaimed perpetual exile against them and, confiscating their estates to the public treasury, now held the rule of Tarquinius in security.

6.1. But before going on with the narrative I wish to render the reasons why I have agreed neither with Fabius nor with the other historians who write that the children left behind by Tarquinius were his sons, lest any of those who have read those histories suppose that I am writing carelessly in calling the children not his sons but his grandsons. For the historians have published this account about them altogether without consideration and carelessly, having examined none of the impossibilities and absurdities that overthrow it; each of which I shall try to make clear in a few words.

6.2. Tarquinius removed from Tyrrhenia, breaking up his whole household, when he was at the prime of life for judgment; for it is recorded that he was already claiming the right to take part in public life, to hold office, and to manage the common affairs, and that he made his departure thence because he had no share in any honour in the city.

6.3. Now another might suppose that he was at least in his thirtieth year when he departed from Tyrrhenia, since it is from this age that the laws for the most part summon those who wish to hold office and to manage public affairs; but I assume him to have been five whole years younger still, and make him to have departed in his twenty-fifth year. And indeed that he brought with him a Tyrrhenian wife, whom he had married while his father was still living, is agreed by all who have written the Roman histories.

6.4. He arrived at Rome in the reign of Ancus Marcius — according to Gellius, in the first year of that reign; according to Licinius, in the eighth. Let it be granted, then, that he came in the year in which Licinius writes, and not earlier; for he could not have come at a later time, since indeed in the ninth year of the rule of Ancus he was sent by the king, as commander of the horse, to the war against the Latins, as both these historians say. If, then, he came to Rome being no more than twenty-five years of age, and having become a friend of King Ancus in the eighth year of his reign, spent the remaining seventeen years with him — for Ancus reigned twenty-four years — and if he himself held the kingship thirty-eight years, as all agree, he would have been eighty years old when he died. For from the reckoning

6.5. of the years this total is gathered. And the wife, if she was five years younger than he, as is likely, would have been in her seventy-fifth year when Tarquinius died. If, then, she bore the younger of the sons last when she was in her fiftieth year — for beyond this time a woman no longer conceives, but this is the very limit of childbearing, as those who have examined these matters write — this son would have been not less than twenty-five years old at his father's death, and the elder, Lucius, not less than twenty-seven. It is not, therefore, the case that Tarquinius

6.6. left behind infant sons born of this woman. But if indeed the children were of manhood's age when their father died, neither would their mother have been so wretched and god-stricken as to deprive her own children of the rule which their father left them and to bestow it as a favour upon a stranger born of a slave-woman; nor would the children themselves, robbed of their father's rule, have borne the injustice in slack and careless fashion, and that at the very prime of their power to speak and to act. For Tullius did not surpass them in nobility of birth, being the son of a slave mother, nor did he differ greatly in the dignity of age, being older than one of them by only three years; so that they would not willingly have yielded the kingship to him.

7.1. The matter has also certain other absurdities, of which all who have composed Roman histories were ignorant save one, whose name I shall mention shortly. For it is agreed that, after the death of Tarquinius, Tullius received the kingship and held it forty-four years; so that, if the elder of the Tarquinii was twenty-six years old at the time when he was deprived of the rule, he would have been over seventy when he killed Tullius.

7.2. But the historians have recorded that he was at the prime of his strength at that time, and they say that he himself lifted up Tullius from the senate-house and, carrying him outside, hurled him down the steps. His own expulsion from the rule takes place in the twenty-fifth year after that, and in that year he is introduced as campaigning in the war against the Ardeates and performing all the operations in person; but there is no reason in his being mustered for wars at the age of ninety-six.

7.3. And after being driven from the rule, he is said to have made war on the Romans for not less than fourteen years, taking part in affairs himself, as they say — which is contrary to the common opinions of all men — and the term of his life appears to be more than a hundred and ten years; but our regions do not produce such length of life.

7.4. Some of the Roman historians, aware of these absurdities, have tried to resolve them by other absurdities, making the mother of the children not Tanaquil but a certain Gegania, concerning whom we have received no account. Thus Tarquinius's marriage again becomes ill-timed, since he was little short of eighty years old; and the begetting of children is incredible for men of that age; nor was he childless, so as to desire offspring at all costs, but he had two daughters, and these

7.5. already married. Reckoning up each of these impossibilities and absurdities, then, I write that the children were not the sons of Tarquinius but his grandsons, agreeing with Lucius Piso the Frugi; for he alone has recorded these things in his Annals — unless indeed the children were by birth the king's grandsons, but his sons by adoption, and this was the cause of the error to all the others who have written the Roman histories. These things having been stated beforehand, it is now time to return to the remaining narrative.

8.1. When Tullius, having taken over the guardianship of the kingdom and having driven out the faction of the Marcii, now believed that he securely held the rule, he honoured the king Tarquinius — as one but lately dead of his wounds — with a costly funeral, the construction of a notable tomb, and the other honours; and for the time thereafter, as guardian of the children of the royal line, he made both their private welfare and the public affairs of the city the object of his watchfulness and care.

8.2. But what was being done was not to the liking of the patricians; rather they were indignant and bore it ill, not thinking it right that he should contrive for himself a kind of royal authority, when neither the senate had voted it nor the other things prescribed by law had been carried out. So the most powerful among them, meeting together often, conferred with one another about overthrowing this unlawful rule, and they resolved that, as soon as they should be convened in the senate by Tullius, they would compel the man to lay down the rods and the rest of the insignia of office; and when this should be done, to appoint the so-called interreges and through them to choose, according to the laws, the one who should rule the

8.3. city. While they were planning this, Tullius, getting wind of it, turned to courting the favour of the people and to cultivating the poorer citizens, hoping through them to retain the rule; and having summoned the multitude to an assembly, he brought the children forward upon the platform and delivered a speech of the following kind.

9.1. "Great necessity has come upon me, fellow citizens, to care for these children, who are infants. For Tarquinius, their grandfather, taking me up when I was fatherless and without a city, reared me as in no way inferior to his own children, and gave me one of his daughters to wife; and throughout all the time of his life he continued to honour and love me, as you also know, as though I had been born of himself; and when the matter of the conspiracy befell him, he entrusted to me, in case he should suffer anything human,

9.2. the care of the children. Who, then, will reckon me holy toward the gods or just toward men, if I forsake and betray the orphans, to whom I owe so many favours? But I will not betray my own faith nor forsake the children's desolation, so far as lies in my power. And it is just that you too should remember the benefits which their grandfather conferred upon the commonwealth, in subjecting to you so many cities of the Latins that disputed the rule, in making subject to you all the Tyrrhenians, the most powerful of your neighbours, and in compelling the Sabine nation to come under your hand — accomplishing all this amid many and great dangers.

9.3. So long, then, as he himself lived, it was fitting that you should acknowledge to him your gratitude for these benefits; but now that he has ended his life, it is fitting to render the recompense to his descendants, and not to bury, together with the bodies of your benefactors, the memory of their deeds as well. Consider yourselves, therefore, all jointly left as guardians of the children, and confirm to them the rule which their grandfather left. For they would not derive so great a benefit from my single protection as from the common aid of you all.

9.4. I have been compelled to say this because I perceive that certain men are combining against them and wish to hand over the rule to others. And I ask you, men of Rome, remembering my own struggles which I waged on behalf of the sovereignty — struggles neither small nor few, which I need not recount to you who know them — to render to these children the gratitude owed to me in return for them. For I have chosen to manage the public affairs, not to procure a private rule for myself — of which I should have been worthy as much as any man, had I wished to obtain it — but to aid the family of Tarquinius.

9.5. And I become a suppliant of you, that you not forsake the orphans, who now run a danger concerning the rule, and who, if the first attempt of their enemies prospers according to plan, will also be driven from the city. But concerning these matters, as you have recognized what is needful and will do all that is fitting, I need say no more. But hear from me the benefits which I myself am prepared to confer upon you, and for the sake of which I have summoned the assembly.

9.6. As many of you as, being already in debt, are unable through poverty to pay — being eager to help these men, since they are citizens and have endured many toils on behalf of their country, that those who secured the common liberty may not be deprived of their own — from my own

9.7. funds I give you the means to discharge your debts. And as many as shall borrow hereafter, these I will not allow to be led off in bondage for their debts, and I will enact a law that no one shall lend on the security of free persons, deeming it sufficient for the creditors to have control of the property of those who have contracted with them. And that you may henceforth bear more lightly the contributions made to the public treasury, on account of which the poor are burdened and compelled to contract loans, I will order all to have their properties assessed and each to contribute from the assessment the amount that falls to him, as I learn is done in the greatest and best-governed cities; for I deem it both just and advantageous to the commonwealth that those who possess much should contribute much, and those who have little, little.

9.8. It seems to me, moreover, that of the public land, which you possess, having acquired it by arms, the most shameless should not, as now, hold it — men who have neither received it as a favour nor acquired it by purchase — but rather those of you who have no allotment, that you may not be hired labourers, though free, nor till the possessions of others, but your own; for no noble spirit can arise in men who are in want of the daily necessities.

9.9. Above all these things, I have resolved to make the constitution equal and common, and justice the same for all toward all. For some have come to such a pitch of insolence that they think fit to outrage the common people and not even to regard the poor among you as free. That the greater and the lesser may both receive and render justice on equal terms, I will enact laws that prevent violence and guard justice; and I myself will at no time relax in providing for the equality of speech of all."

10.1. While he was speaking thus, much praise arose from the assembly: some praised him because he was faithful and just toward his benefactors; others because he was humane and magnanimous toward the poor; others because he was moderate and democratic toward the humbler sort; and all loved and admired him because he was a lawful and just

10.2. ruler. When the assembly had been dismissed, on the following days he ordered the debtors who were unable to keep their faith to register to whom they owed and how much each; and when he had received the registers, setting up tables in the Forum, he counted out the debts to the creditors in the sight of all.

10.3. Having accomplished this, he set forth in public a royal edict, that those who were enjoying the use of the public land and holding it privately should withdraw from it within a fixed time, and that those citizens who had no allotment should register with him. He also drew up laws, some renewing the ancient and neglected ones which Romulus and Numa Pompilius had introduced, others

10.4. establishing himself. While he was thus engaged in statecraft, the patricians bore it ill, seeing the power of the senate being dissolved, and they no longer took the same counsels, but ones opposite to their former ones.

10.5. For in the beginning they had set out to take away his unlawful rule by appointing interreges and through them choosing one who should hold the office according to the laws; but then they thought they ought to be content with the present state of things and to meddle no further. For the reflection came to them that, if the senate brought to power the man whom it preferred, the people would oppose it by taking up the vote; but if they should make the choice of the king depend on the people, all the curiae would vote for Tullius, and it would result that the man would seem to rule according to the laws. They concluded, therefore, that it was better for the man to hold the rule by stealing it and circumventing the citizens than by persuading them and openly receiving it.

10.6. But none of their calculations availed them: so completely did Tullius out-general them and hold the kingship against their will. For having for a long time contrived that reports should circulate through the city that the patricians were plotting against him, he came forth into the Forum clad in soiled raiment and downcast, accompanied by his mother Ocrisia, by Tanaquil the wife of Tarquinius, and by the whole royal kindred. And when a great crowd had run together at the strangeness of the sight, he summoned an assembly, came forward upon the platform, and delivered a speech somewhat as follows.

11.1. "No longer is my danger only on behalf of the children of Tarquinius, that they suffer no terrible thing from their enemies; but now fear for my own life also enters in, lest I receive bitter recompense for my justice. For I am being plotted against by the patricians, and certain of them have been denounced to me as conspiring to kill me — having no injustice, neither greater nor less, to charge against me, but vexed and aggrieved at the good I have done the people and am prepared to do.

11.2. The creditors are angry because I did not permit the poor among you to be deprived of their liberty, led off by them for their debts; those who are embezzling and holding the public lands, because they are compelled to give up the land which you acquired with your blood, as though they were being robbed of an ancestral inheritance and not surrendering what belongs to others; those exempted from the war-contributions, because they will be compelled to have their lives assessed and to contribute from the assessments; and all in common, because they will be accustomed to live according to written laws, giving and receiving justice with you on equal terms, and will no longer abuse the poor like bought slaves, as they now do.

11.3. And these complaints they have brought together into a common cause and have resolved and sworn together to bring back the exiles and to restore the kingship to the sons of Marcius — those whom you, when they had slain Tarquinius your king, a good man and a lover of his city, and had wrought so great a pollution, and had abandoned their trials by default and assessed exile against themselves, voted to debar from fire and water. And, had not the information come to me speedily, they were about, bringing in a foreign force, while it was still night, to bring back the exiles into the city in great numbers.

11.4. What followed you all surely know, even if I do not say it: that the Marcii, with the patricians aiding them, having seized power without effort, were about first to seize me, the guardian of the kings and the one who carried out the trials against them; then to make away with these children and all the other kinsmen and friends of Tarquinius; and to reckon our wives and mothers and daughters and the whole female sex as captives — being men who have in their nature much of the bestial and

11.5. the tyrannical. If, then, this too is your wish, plebeians — to bring back murderers and proclaim them kings, and to drive out the children of your benefactors and rob them of the rule left them by their grandfather — we will be content with our fortune. But, by all the gods and divinities who watch over the life of men, all of us becoming suppliants of you, together with our wives and children, in return for the many benefits with which Tarquinius, the children's grandfather, continued to serve you, and in return for the many in which I myself, according to my power, have been useful to you, we ask you to grant us this one gift: to make plain your own resolve.

11.6. For if you have supposed that certain others are worthier than we to obtain this honour, the children will depart, leaving the city to you, and the rest of the kindred of Tarquinius; and I will take some nobler counsel concerning myself. For my life has already been lived sufficiently both for virtue and for good repute, and I would not, having been cheated of your goodwill — which I have chosen in preference to every good — think it worth my while to live shamefully among other men. Take, then, the rods, and give them, if you wish, to the patricians; I will not trouble you by my presence."

12.1. While he was saying this and was making as if to withdraw from the platform, there arose from all an immense outcry and entreaties mingled with tears, that he should remain and keep hold of affairs, fearing no one. Then certain men, set on for the purpose and posted about the Forum, cried out that they should make him king, and demanded that the curiae be summoned and called for a vote. And when these had begun, at once the whole people came round to the same purpose.

12.2. Perceiving this, Tullius no longer let the moment pass, but, saying that he owed them many thanks because they remembered his benefits, and promising to do still more good if they should declare him king, he appointed a day for the election, to which he ordered all those from the country also to be present.

12.3. When the people had assembled, calling the curiae one by one, he distributed the votes. And being adjudged worthy of the kingship by all the curiae, he then received the rule from the multitude of the commons, bidding a long farewell to the senate, which he did not see fit to have ratify the decisions of the people, as was its custom. Having come to the kingship in this manner, he became the author of many other measures of statecraft, and he waged a great war, worthy of record, against the Tyrrhenians. But I will first speak of his measures of statecraft.

13.1. Immediately upon receiving the rule he distributed the public land among those Romans who served for hire; then he confirmed by the curiae the laws relating to contracts and to wrongs; these were about fifty in number, of which I need make no mention at present.

13.2. To the city he added two hills, the one called the Viminal and the Esquiline, each of which has the size of a considerable city, and he distributed them among those Romans who had no homes, to build houses upon; there too he himself made his dwelling, in the strongest part of the Esquiline.

13.3. This king was the last to enlarge the circuit of the city, adding the two hills to the five, after taking the auspices as the law required and performing the other rites due to the gods. But the building of the city advanced no further, the divine power, as they say, not permitting it; and all the districts about the city that are inhabited, many and large though they be, are unfortified and without walls,

13.4. and very easily made subject to enemies who come against them. And if anyone, looking at these, should wish to estimate the size of Rome, he will be forced to wander and will have no sure mark by which to judge how far the city, still advancing, extends, and where it begins to be city no longer: so closely is the town interwoven with the country, and it presents to those who behold it the impression of a city stretched out to infinity.

13.5. But if one should wish to measure it by the wall — which is hard to find because of the dwellings that surround it on many sides, though it preserves in many places some traces of its ancient construction — by the circuit that encloses the town of the Athenians, the circuit of Rome would appear to him not much larger. But concerning the size and beauty of the city, as it was in my own time, there will be another occasion more suitable for the narrative.

14.1. Tullius, then, when he had enclosed the seven hills with one wall, divided the city into four parts and gave to the parts names from the hills — to one Palatine, to another Suburan, to the third Colline, and to the fourth of the parts Esquiline — and made the city to be of four tribes, whereas it had been of three before.

14.2. And he ordered the men dwelling in each of the four parts, like villagers, neither to take up another dwelling nor to be enrolled anywhere else; and the levies of soldiers and the collections of money for military and other needs which each man had to furnish to the commonwealth, he made no longer according to the three tribes by birth, as before, but according to the four local tribes appointed by himself; and he set commanders over each division, like phylarchs or village-chiefs, whom he ordered to know what house each man dwelt in.

14.3. Then he ordered that in all the lanes shrines should be built by the neighbours, little chapels to the heroes of the crossways, and he enacted that sacrifices be performed to them every year, each household bringing cakes; and for those who celebrated the rites of the neighbours at the crossway-shrines he appointed that not the free, but the slaves, should be present and join in the rites, as though the service of the bondsmen were pleasing to the heroes;

14.4. this festival the Romans continued to keep even in my own day, a few days after the Saturnalia, with great solemnity and at great expense, calling it the Compitalia from the lanes — for they call the lanes compiti — and they preserve the ancient custom in the rites, propitiating the heroes through their servants and removing from them every mark of slavery during those days, that the slaves, being softened by this humanity — which has in it something great and solemn — may become more agreeable toward their masters and may bear the grievous things of fortune less heavily.

15.1. He divided all the country also, as Fabius says, into twenty-six parts, which he too calls tribes, adding to them the four city tribes; but as Vennonius has recorded, into thirty-one, so that with those in the city the thirty-five tribes still existing in our time were made up. Cato, however, who is more trustworthy than both of these, says that there were thirty tribes in all under Tullius, and does not distinguish the number of the parts.

15.2. Tullius, then, having divided the land into however many parts, established places of refuge upon the hills that could afford much security to the farmers, calling them by Greek names, Pagi, to which all fled together from the fields whenever there should be an inroad of enemies, and most often they

15.3. passed the night there. There were officers over these too, whose business it was to know the names of the farmers belonging to the same pagus and the possessions on which their livelihood depended; and whenever there was need to call the countrymen to arms or to collect money-contributions man by man, these gathered the persons and exacted the money. And that the number of these men might not be hard to find, but easy to reckon and plain, he ordered them to set up altars of the gods who watched over and guarded the pagus, whom he appointed should be honoured with common sacrifices every year, all assembling together; and he established this also as one of the most honoured festivals, the so-called Paganalia; and he drew up laws concerning these rites, which the Romans still keep under guard.

15.4. And for this sacrifice and the assembly he ordered all the members of the same pagus to contribute per head a certain fixed coin, one sum for the men, another for the women, and another for those under age. From this, when it was counted up by those in charge of the rites, the number of the people became evident, according to their kinds and their ages.

15.5. And as Lucius Piso records in the first book of his Annals, wishing also to know the number of those dwelling in the city — of those being born and those dying and those being enrolled among the men — he appointed what coin those concerned should pay over for each: into the treasury of Eilithyia, whom the Romans call Juno Lucina, for those being born; into that of Venus, who is established in the grove and whom they call Libitina, for those dying; into that of Youth, for those beginning to be counted among the men. From these he was to learn each year both how many there were in all and which of them were of military age.

15.6. Having established these things, he ordered all the Romans to register and to assess their properties in money, taking the lawful oath that they had assessed them truly and to the best of their judgment, writing down of what fathers they were sprung, declaring the age they were of, naming their wives and children, and adding in what tribe of the city or pagus of the country each dwelt. For the one who did not assess himself he fixed as penalty the loss of his property, and that the man himself be scourged and sold; and for a long time this law remained in force among the Romans.

16.1. When all had been assessed, taking up the registers and ascertaining both their number and the size of their estates, he introduced the wisest of all political measures and one which was the cause of the greatest blessings to the Romans, as the results showed.

16.2. The measure was as follows. He took out one portion from all, of which the greatest assessment of property was not less than a hundred minae. These, arranging them into eighty centuries, he ordered to bear as arms Argolic shields, spears, bronze helmets, breastplates, greaves, and swords. Dividing them into two, he made forty centuries of the younger men, to whom he assigned the campaigns in the field, and forty of the older, who were to remain in the city, when the youth went out to war, and guard what was within the walls.

16.3. This was the first class; it held in war the position fighting in front of the whole phalanx. Then from those who remained he took out another portion, those whose assessment was within ten thousand drachmae but not less than seventy-five minae. Arranging these into twenty centuries, he ordered them to bear the same arms as the former, except that he took away their breastplates and, instead of round shields, gave them oblong shields. Dividing off from among these too those over forty-five years from those of military age, he made ten centuries of the younger, who were to fight before the city, and ten of the older, to whom he assigned the guarding of the walls. This was the second class; it was arrayed in

16.4. the battles behind the front-fighters. The third class he made from those remaining who had an assessment less than seven thousand five hundred drachmae but not less than fifty minae. Of these he diminished the armament not only by the breastplates,

16.5. as for the second, but also by the greaves. He arranged these too into twenty centuries and divided them in the same manner as the former by ages, assigning ten centuries to the younger and ten to the older. The position and station of these centuries in battle was behind those posted behind the front-fighters.

17.1. Again taking out from those remaining those who had property less than five thousand drachmae down to twenty-five minae, he made a fourth portion. These too he arranged into twenty centuries, and made ten of those in their prime and ten of those over age, as with the former. He ordered them to bear as arms oblong shields, swords, and spears, and to hold in battle the last position.

17.2. The fifth portion, those whose livelihood was within twenty-five minae down to twelve and a half minae, he arranged into thirty centuries. These too were divided by age: fifteen of the centuries held the older men, fifteen the younger. He ordered these to serve outside the ranks armed with javelins and

17.3. slings. Four centuries having no arms at all he ordered to accompany those bearing arms; of these four, two were of armourers and carpenters and the others who made the things useful for war, and two of trumpeters and horn-blowers and those who signalled with certain other instruments the calls of war. The artisans were attached to those holding the second assessment, divided by age, the one century following the older, the other the younger.

17.4. The trumpeters and horn-blowers were arranged with the fourth portion. Of these too there was one century of the older and one of the younger; and the captains, chosen from all as the most valiant in war, made their several centuries obedient to the commands given them.

18.1. This was the arrangement that filled out the infantry, both the army of the phalanx-soldiers and the light-armed. The body of horse he chose from those having the greatest assessment and distinguished in birth; he arranged them into eighteen centuries and attached them to the first eighty centuries of the phalanx-soldiers; these too had the most distinguished captains.

18.2. The remaining citizens, who had an assessment less than twelve and a half minae and were more numerous than the former, he arranged all into a single century and freed them from military service and made them exempt from every contribution. There were, then, six divisions, which the Romans call classes, naming them by a paronym from the Greek call; for what we, framing it as an imperative, utter as kalei ("call"), they pronounce cala, and the classes they anciently called caleses;

18.3. and the centuries which the divisions comprised were one hundred and ninety-three. The first division contained ninety-eight centuries together with the horse; the second, twenty-two together with the artisans; the third, twenty; the fourth again twenty-two together with the trumpeters and horn-blowers; the fifth, thirty; and that posted last of all, one century, that of the poor.

19.1. Using this arrangement, he made the levies of soldiers according to the division of the centuries, and the assessment of contributions according to the valuations of estates. For whenever he had need of ten thousand or, it might be, twenty thousand soldiers, dividing the number among the hundred and ninety-three centuries, he ordered each century to furnish the number that fell to it; and reckoning the expense for the provisioning of the troops and the other supplies of war that were to be furnished, how much would suffice, dividing it in the same way among the hundred and ninety-three centuries, he ordered all to contribute the sum falling to each from the assessment.

19.2. The result, then, was that those having the greatest estates, being fewer but divided into more centuries, served more campaigns, never resting, and contributed more money than the rest; while those possessing moderate or small means, being more numerous in fewer centuries, served seldom and by turns and paid small contributions; and those possessing less than the required amount were exempt from all burdens.

19.3. He did each of these things not without reason, but being persuaded that for all men the prizes of wars are their possessions, and that all toil hard for the guarding of these; he thought it right, therefore, that those who risked greater prizes should endure greater hardships both in their persons and their property, that those who risked lesser should be less burdened in both respects, and that those who feared for nothing should suffer no hardship, being released from contributions because of their poverty and from campaigns because of their freedom from contribution. For the Romans did not at that time receive military pay from the public treasury, but served at their own expense.

19.4. He thought, then, that those who had nothing from which to contribute should not contribute money, but, lacking the daily necessities, should be excused; nor that any, contributing nothing, should serve being paid from the moneys of others, like mercenaries.

20.1. Having in this way laid all the burden, both of dangers and of expenses, upon the rich, when he saw them indignant, by another means he soothed their discouragement and softened their anger by bestowing on them an advantage from which they were to become masters of the whole constitution, driving the poor away from public affairs; and in accomplishing this he escaped the notice of the commons. The advantage concerned the assemblies, in which the greatest matters were ratified by the people.

20.2. It has been stated by me before that the people, by the ancient laws, had control of the three greatest and most necessary matters: to appoint the magistracies, both those in the city and those in the field; to ratify some laws and abolish others; and to decide concerning a war being undertaken or concluded. The consideration and judgment of these matters it made by voting according to the curiae; and those possessing the least had a vote equal to those having the greatest estates; and the rich being few, as is natural, the poor prevailed in the votings, being far more numerous than they.

20.3. Tullius, perceiving this, transferred the power of the votes to the rich. For whenever it seemed good to him to appoint magistracies, or to decide about a law, or to declare war, he convened the centuriate assembly instead of the curiate. He called first to declare their opinion the centuries enrolled from the highest assessment, among which were the eighteen of the horse and the eighty of the foot.

20.4. These, being three more than the remaining centuries, if they were of one mind, prevailed over the others, and the decision was reached. But if all these did not come to the same purpose, then he called the twenty-two centuries from the second assessment. And the votes being divided then too, he called those from the third assessment; and fourth, those from the fourth assessment. And this he did until ninety-seven centuries should be of like vote. But if down to the fifth call

20.5. this did not chance to happen, but the opinions of the hundred and ninety-two centuries were split into equal parts, then he called the last century, in which was the multitude of citizens who were poor and for that reason exempt from all military service and contribution; and to whichever of the parts this century attached itself, that part gained the victory. But this was rare and not far from impossible. For the most part the decision was reached at the first call, and seldom did it advance to the fourth; the fifth call and the last were superfluous.

21.1. Having established this measure and given the rich so great an advantage, he escaped the notice of the people, as I said, having out-generalled them and driven the poor away from public affairs. For all supposed that they had an equal share in the constitution, since they were each asked their opinions man by man in their own centuries; but they were deceived because there was one vote for the whole century, whether it contained few citizens or very many; and because the centuries having the greatest assessment voted first — being more in number than the rest, but containing fewer men; and most of all because the poor, being many, had a single vote and were called last.

21.2. This having come to pass, it less occurred to the rich — who spent much and received no respite from the dangers of war — to feel burdened, since they had become masters of the greatest things and had taken all the power from those who did not act as they did; while the poor, who had the smallest share in political affairs, bore their diminution in these matters reasonably and gently, being released from contributions and campaigns; and the city had the same men both to deliberate about its needs and to share most of all in the dangers and to do what was needful.

21.3. This order of the constitution remained guarded by the Romans for many generations; but in our times it has been shifted and changed to the more democratic, forced by certain strong necessities — not that the centuries were abolished, but that the calling of them no longer preserved the ancient exactness, as I have learned, having often been present at their elections. But concerning these matters the present is not the fitting occasion for the discussion.

22.1. At that time, then, when Tullius had ordered the matter of the assessments, ordering all the citizens to assemble in the largest of the plains before the city bearing their arms, and having arrayed the horse by squadrons, the foot in phalanx, and those equipped with the light armament each in their own centuries, he performed a lustration of them with a bull, a ram, and a he-goat. Ordering these victims to be led three times around the army, he sacrificed to Mars, who possesses that plain.

22.2. By this lustration even down to my own times the Romans purify themselves after the completion of the assessments, through those holding the most sacred office, calling it a Lustrum. The total number of the Romans who assessed their lives at that time was, as is recorded in the censorial writings, eighty thousand lacking three hundred.

22.3. This king took no small forethought also for the increase of the body politic, perceiving a thing which all the kings before him had neglected. For they, by receiving strangers and giving them a share in the equal citizenship, deeming no birth or fortune of theirs unworthy, advanced the city to great population.

22.4. But Tullius permitted even the freed among the servants, if they did not wish to depart to their own cities, to share in the equal citizenship. For ordering these too, together with all the other free persons, to assess their properties, he enrolled them in the four city tribes, in which the freedman class, however great it be, continues to be ranked even to our times; and he granted them a share of all the public privileges of which the other plebeians partook.

23.1. When the patricians were vexed at the matter and bore it ill, summoning the multitude to an assembly he said that he marvelled, first, at those who were indignant, if they thought that the free differed from the slave in nature rather than in fortune; and second, if they tested the worthy of honours not by their characters and manners but by their chance fortunes, seeing how unstable and quick to change a thing prosperity is, and how it is not easy for anyone, not even of the very blessed, to say for how long a time it

23.2. will remain with him. He bade them consider how many cities, both barbarian and Greek, had already changed from slavery to freedom, and how many from freedom to slavery; and he condemned much folly in them, if, while granting freedom to the worthy among their servants, they begrudged them the citizenship. He counselled them, if they thought them wicked, not to make them free; but if

23.3. good, not to overlook them as aliens. He said they were doing an absurd and ignorant thing, in permitting all strangers to share in the city without distinguishing their fortunes — not inquiring busily whether any of them had become free from slaves — yet deeming those who had been slaves among themselves unworthy of this favour; and he said that those who supposed they surpassed others in good sense did not see even the things at their feet, the most common, which were plain even to the basest: namely, that the masters would have great care not to free men readily, as being about to bestow on chance persons the greatest of human goods; and that the slaves would have still greater eagerness to be good toward their masters, if they learned that, being judged worthy of freedom, they would forthwith be citizens of a prosperous and great city, and would have both these goods from their masters.

23.4. He ended by introducing the argument from advantage, reminding those who knew and teaching those who were ignorant, that for a city aiming at dominion and deeming itself worthy of great affairs there is no need of anything so much as of abundance of men, that it may suffice for all its wars, using its own arms and not, by hiring foreign armies, be exhausted along with its money; and for this reason, he said, the former kings had given a share of the citizenship to all strangers.

23.5. And if they should establish this law also, he said much youth would be reared for them from the freedmen, and the city would never lack its own arms, but would always have forces sufficient, even if it should be compelled to make war on all mankind.

23.6. And apart from the common advantage, the wealthiest of the Romans would be greatly benefited privately as well, if they should permit the freedmen to share in the citizenship — receiving their gratitude in assemblies and votings and the other political occasions, in the matters where they most have need, and leaving to their own descendants the clients sprung from the freedmen.

23.7. While he was saying such things, the patricians consented that the custom should come into the city; and to our times it continues to be guarded in the city as one of the sacred and immovable usages.

24.1. Since I have come to this part of the narrative, it seems necessary to me to set forth how the customs of the Romans concerning their slaves stood at that time, that neither the king who first attempted to make citizens of those who had been slaves, nor those who accepted the law, may be held in blame by anyone as men throwing away the noble things at random.

24.2. The acquisitions of servants by the Romans came about in the most just ways. For either, having bought from the public treasury those sold under the spear out of the spoils; or, with the general's consent, having along with the other profits the captives also for those who took them; or having bought from others who had become owners in the same ways — thus they had acquired their slaves.

24.3. Neither Tullius, then, who established the custom, nor those who accepted and preserved it, thought they were doing anything that was a cause of shame or of common harm, if to those deprived in war of country and freedom — who had become good toward those who enslaved them, or toward those who bought them from these — both these things should be supplied by their masters.

24.4. Most of them obtained their freedom freely on account of their merit; and this was the best manner of release from masters; but a few paid ransom gathered from holy and just earnings. But it is not so in our times; rather affairs have come to such confusion, and the noble things of the city of the Romans have become so dishonoured and foul, that some, having made money from brigandage and burglary and prostitution and every other base resource, buy their freedom with this money and are forthwith Romans;

24.5. others, having become accomplices and helpers of their masters in poisonings and murders and crimes against the gods or the commonwealth, receive these favours from them; others, that, receiving the corn distributed publicly each month, or whatever other bounty is given by the rulers to the needy citizens, they may bring it to those who gave them their freedom; and others through the

24.6. frivolity of their masters and empty love of glory. I myself, at any rate, know of some who have granted all their slaves to be free after their own deaths, that they may be called good men when dead, and that many may follow their biers as they are carried out, wearing the caps of freedom on their heads; among whom, as one might hear from those who knew, some marched in procession who had but lately come out of the prisons, malefactors who had committed deeds deserving ten thousand deaths. At these stains, so hard to wash out, the multitude, looking upon the city, are displeased and abhor the custom, as not befitting a sovereign city which deems itself worthy to rule

24.7. every region, to make such men citizens. One might find fault with many other customs also, well devised by the ancients but badly corrupted by men of the present day. For my part, I do not think this law ought to be abolished, lest some greater evil break out for the commonwealth through it; but I say that what can be corrected ought to be corrected, and that we ought not to overlook great reproaches and stains hard to wash out being introduced into the body politic.

24.8. And I would ask that the censors above all take forethought for this matter; or, failing that, the consuls; for there is need of some great magistrate; men who shall examine those who are freed each year — who they are, and why, and how they were freed — just as they examine the lives of the knights and of the senators; then those whom they find worthy of the city they shall enrol in tribes and permit to remain in the city; but the polluted and unclean tribe they shall cast out of the city, giving the act a seemly name, calling it a colony. These things, then, since the subject demands it, seemed to me necessary and just to say in answer to those who censure the customs of the Romans.

25.1. Tullius showed himself democratic not only in those measures of statecraft in which he was thought to lessen the authority of the senate and the power of the patricians, but also in those in which he diminished the royal power itself, taking away from himself the half of his authority.

25.2. For whereas the kings before him had claimed to bring all suits before themselves and decided all charges, both private and public, according to their own pleasure, he, separating public matters from private, himself made the decisions in wrongs that bore upon the commonwealth, but appointed private persons to be judges in private suits, fixing for them limits and

25.3. rules — the laws which he himself wrote. When his affairs in the city had received the best order, he came into a desire, by performing some illustrious deed, to leave an eternal memory of himself to posterity. And turning his thought to the monuments of the ancient kings and statesmen by which they advanced to renown and glory, he did not count that Assyrian woman blessed for the wall of Babylon, nor the kings of Egypt for the pyramids at Memphis, nor any other display of wealth and abundant labour of a ruler; but deeming all these to be small and short-lived and not worthy of zeal — deceptions of the eye, not true benefits to life and affairs, from which only the praise of being blessed followed for those who built them — and considering worthy of praise and emulation the works of judgment, of which very many enjoy the use and reap the benefits for the longest time, he admired above all such works the device of Amphictyon the Hellene, who, seeing the Greek race weak and easily destroyed by the surrounding barbarians, brought it together into the Amphictyonic council and festival named after him, establishing, besides the private laws which each city had, laws common to all, which they call Amphictyonic; by these they continued to be friends to one another, preserving their kinship more by deeds than by words, but grievous and fearful to the barbarians.

25.4. Taking the example from him, the Ionians who removed their dwelling from Europe to the coasts of Caria, and the Dorians who founded their cities about the same regions, built temples from common expenses — the Ionians at Ephesus the temple of Artemis, the Dorians at Triopium that of Apollo — where, coming together with their wives and children at the appointed times, they sacrificed in common and held festival together and celebrated games, equestrian and gymnastic and of the musical kind, and honoured the gods with common offerings.

25.5. And when they had viewed the spectacles and held festival and renewed their other friendly relations with one another, if any quarrel had arisen of city against city, sitting as judges they decided it; and concerning the war against the barbarians and concerning their harmony with one another they took common counsel.

25.6. Taking these and similar examples, he too became eager to unite and bring together all the cities sharing in the Latin race, that they might not, quarrelling and warring with one another, be robbed of their freedom by the neighbouring barbarians.

26.1. Having resolved on this, he summoned the most powerful men from each city, saying that he was calling them to be his counsellors about great and common affairs. And when they had come together, gathering the Roman senate and those who had come from the cities, he delivered a speech exhorting to concord, teaching that a fine thing it is for many cities to use one mind, but a shameful sight for kindred to quarrel with one another; and he declared concord the cause of strength to the weak, but mutual destruction the cause of lowliness and weakness even to the very strong.

26.2. Having set forth these things, he taught them that the Latins ought to rule the neighbouring peoples and to ordain justice for them, being Greeks set over barbarians; and that the Romans ought to hold the leadership of all the Latins, excelling them in the size of their city and the weight of their affairs, and having enjoyed a better providence of the divine power than they, through which they had advanced to so great a distinction.

26.3. Having set forth such things, he counselled them to build a temple of asylum from common expenses at Rome, in which the cities, coming together each year, should perform both private and common sacrifices and hold festivals at whatever times they should appoint; and, if any quarrel should arise among them with one another, they should settle it from the sacred rites, entrusting to the other cities the decision of the charges.

26.4. Setting forth these things and how many other goods they would have if they established a council-chamber, he persuaded all those present in the assembly; and after this he built, from the moneys which all the cities contributed, the temple of Artemis, the one situated on the largest of the hills in Rome, the Aventine; and he drew up the laws for the cities with one another and ordered the other matters concerning the festival and assembly, in what manner it should be celebrated.

26.5. And that no length of time might efface them, having made a bronze pillar, he wrote upon it both the resolutions of the councillors and the cities sharing in the council. This pillar remained down to my own time, lying in the temple of Artemis, with letters of the Greek characters which Greece anciently used. And this too one might make no small proof that those who founded Rome were not barbarians. For they would not have used Greek letters if they had been barbarians.

26.6. Of this king's measures of statecraft, then, these are the greatest and most brilliant that are recorded, along with many others lesser and more obscure; but his warlike deeds were those against the one nation of the Tyrrhenians, concerning which I am now about to relate.

27.1. After the death of Tarquinius the cities which had handed over the leadership to him no longer wished to keep their agreements, not thinking it right to obey Tullius, who was of humble birth, and believing that the dissension of the patricians with their leader would afford them great advantage.

27.2. Those called the Veientes began the revolt and answered the ambassadors who came from Tullius that they had no agreement with him, either concerning the cession of the leadership or concerning friendship and alliance. These having begun, the Caeretani followed and the Tarquinienses, and at last all Tyrrhenia was in arms.

27.3. This war continued to be waged for twenty years without interruption, both sides making many invasions of one another's territory with great armies and forming battle-lines one after another. But Tullius, succeeding in all the battles, as many as were fought with him both against the cities and against the whole nation, and being honoured with three most illustrious triumphs, at last compelled those who would not be ruled to take the bridle willingly.

27.4. In the twentieth year, then, the twelve cities, exhausted in the war both in men and in money, came together again and resolved to hand over the leadership to the Romans on the same terms they had voted before. And there came from every city the men chosen, with suppliant boughs, entrusting their cities to Tullius and asking that no irremediable measures be resolved upon concerning them.

27.5. Tullius said that for their folly and their impiety toward the gods — whom they had made guarantors of their agreements and then transgressed what had been covenanted — they deserved many great punishments; but that, by reason of the Romans' equity and moderation, since, acknowledging their wrong, they were deprecating his

27.6. anger with garlands and supplications, they should fare ill in nothing for the present. Saying this, he brought the war against them to an end, granting to the other cities, simply and without vindictive anger, to govern themselves as before and to enjoy their own possessions, remaining in the treaties written for them by King Tarquinius; but three of the cities — those which had revolted first and had drawn the others into making war on the Romans, the Caeretani and Tarquinienses and Veientes — he punished by taking away a portion of their land, which he allotted to those Romans who had but lately come over to the citizenship.

27.7. Having accomplished these things in peace and in wars, and having built two temples to Fortune, of whom throughout all his life he was thought to have enjoyed the good — the one in the so-called Forum Boarium, the other on the banks of the Tiber, which he surnamed Manly (as even now it is called by the Romans) — being far advanced in age and not far from his natural end, he was killed, the victim of a plot by Tarquinius his son-in-law and by his own daughter. I will relate also the manner of the plot, taking up briefly some of the things that happened before.

28.1. Tullius had two daughters born of his wife Tarquinia, whom King Tarquinius had betrothed to him. These maidens, when they came of marriageable age, he gave to the nephews of their mother, the grandsons of Tarquinius, matching the elder to the elder and the younger to the younger, thinking that thus they would best agree with those who received them.

28.2. But it happened that each of the sons-in-law was joined to a fortune contrary to himself, through unlikeness of character. For to Lucius, the elder, who was bold and self-willed and tyrannical in nature, came a good and modest and father-loving wife; while to Arruns, the younger, who had much of gentleness and good sense, the wedded woman was impious and father-hating and capable of any deed.

28.3. Thus it came about that each of the men was borne toward his own nature but drawn by his wife toward the contrary; for the wicked one, eager to expel his father-in-law from the kingship and contriving everything to this end, was turned aside by his wife, who entreated and lamented; while the equitable one, thinking he ought to do no wrong toward his father-in-law, but to wait until nature should lead him out of life, and not allowing his brother to do what was unjust, was drawn toward the contrary by his impious wife, who admonished and reviled him and reproached his unmanliness.

28.4. And when neither the supplications of the modest wife, persuading the unjust man to the best course, nor the exhortations of the wicked one, summoning him who was not by nature wicked to impious deeds, availed anything, but each was borne toward his own nature and deemed grievous the wife who did not wish the same things — to the one it remained to lament and bear her own fate, but to the all-daring woman to be angry and to seek release from him with whom she lived.

28.5. Then the woman, evil in nature, growing desperate and thinking that her sister's husband best suited her own ways, sent for him as though to converse about a necessary matter,

29.1. and when he had come, ordering those within to withdraw, that she might speak with him alone, she said: "May I, Tarquinius, with frankness and without danger speak all that I think concerning our common advantage, and will you keep to yourself whatever words you hear? Or is it better for me to be silent and not bring into the open secret counsels?"

29.2. When Tarquinius bade her say what she wished and gave her pledges by oaths, such as she chose, that he would keep the words within himself, no longer ashamed she said to him: "How long, Tarquinius, do you intend to endure being deprived of the kingship? Were you sprung from humble and obscure ancestors, and is it for this reason that you do not deem yourself worthy to think highly of yourself? But all know that to your ancient ancestors, who were Greeks and descended from Heracles, belonged the sovereign rule of prosperous Corinth for many generations, as I hear; and to your grandfather Tarquinius, who removed his dwelling from the Tyrrhenians, it fell to reign over this city through his virtue; of whom you, being the elder grandson, ought to inherit not only the wealth but also the kingship.

29.3. Or did you not get a body sufficient to do all that befits a king, through weakness and ugliness? But strength is yours, such as belongs to the best endowed, and a form worthy of the royal line. Or is it neither of these, but does youth, still weak and far from prudent judgment, draw you back, for which reason you do not deem yourself fit to manage public affairs — you who are not many years short of being fifty? Men are by nature best able to judge who are about this very age.

29.4. Come then — but does the nobility of him who holds affairs, and his good relations with the most powerful of the citizens, on account of which he is not easily attacked, compel you to endure? But both of these too chance to be in a bad state for him, and you yourself are not ignorant of it. And surely the boldness and love of danger are in your character, which most of all he who is to be king needs. There belong to you also sufficient wealth and many friends and many other great resources for affairs.

29.5. Why, then, do you still delay and await the moment that comes of itself, which will come to you bringing the kingship though you have done nothing to that end — after the death of Tullius, I suppose? As though Fortune awaited the delays of men, or our nature brought to each his end according to his age, and the end of all human affairs did not lie in an obscure and hard-to-conjecture conclusion!

29.6. I will say it then with frankness, even if you will call me bold — what seems to me the cause of your reaching after no ambition nor glory. A wife is with you in no way like your own ways, who, charming and bewitching you, has rendered you soft, and you will become, without knowing it, from a man into a nothing; just as for me there is a timorous husband with nothing of a man, who makes me lowly though I am worthy of great things and fair in body, but withered by him.

29.7. But if it had fallen to you to take me as wife and to me to obtain you as husband, we should not have lived out so long a time in private life. Why, then, do we not correct the defect of fortune by changing our marriages — you removing your own wife from life, and I doing the same to my husband? And when, these having been dispatched, we come together into one, then in security we will plan the rest, having removed out of the way the things that grieve us. For even if one shrinks from other wrongs, for the sake of a kingship there is no offence in daring all things."

30.1. While Tullia was saying such things, Tarquinius gladly accepted her proposals, and at once, having given her pledges and received them, and having performed the preliminary rites of these impious nuptials, he departed. No long time after this, the elder of the daughters of Tullius and the younger of the Tarquinii died by the same calamities.

30.2. Here again I am compelled to make mention of Fabius and to convict his carelessness about the examination of the times. For in dealing with the death of Arruns he errs not in one respect only — which I also said before, that he has written that Arruns was the son of Tarquinius — but also in another, that he says he was buried, after death, by his mother Tanaquil, who could not possibly have been still living in those times.

30.3. For it was shown at the outset that Tanaquil was in her seventy-fifth year when King Tarquinius died; if, then, to the seventy-five years another forty be added — for in the Annals we have received that Arruns died in the fortieth year of the rule of Tullius — Tanaquil will be a hundred and fifteen years old. So small is the diligence about the examination of truth in his histories.

30.4. After this deed Tarquinius, delaying no longer, took Tullia to wife, neither her father confirming the marriage nor her mother consenting, but having received her from herself.

30.5. And when the impious and murderous natures had been blended together, they contrived to expel Tullius from the kingship, if he should not be willing to surrender the rule voluntarily, gathering associations and inviting those of the patricians who were estranged from the king and from the democratic measures, and buying with money the poorest of the common multitude, who had no care for justice; and they did not even do each of these things in secret.

30.6. Tullius, seeing this, was vexed, fearing for himself lest he should suffer some harm by being forestalled; and he was indignant not least because he would be compelled to make war on his daughter and son-in-law and to take vengeance as from enemies. Often, with his friends, he summoned Tarquinius to conference, now reproaching, now admonishing, now persuading him to do no wrong against himself; and when Tarquinius did not give heed but said he would state his just claims against him before the senate, Tullius summoned the council and said:

30.7. "Senators, Tarquinius, gathering associations against me and eager to expel me from the rule, has become manifest to me. I wish, in the presence of you all, to learn from him what private harm he has suffered, or what wrong to the city he sees being done by me, that he contrives these things against me. Answer, then, Tarquinius, hiding nothing — what accusation you have to bring against me, since you saw fit that these men should hear."

31.1. Tarquinius says to him: "My speech is brief, Tullius, and just; and for this reason I chose to bring it before these men. Tarquinius, being my grandfather, acquired the rule of the Romans, taking upon himself many and great struggles on its behalf. He having died, I am his successor according to the common laws of all, both Greeks and barbarians; and it belongs to me, as to all others who succeed to their grandfathers' estates, to inherit not only the wealth, but also

31.2. his kingship. But the wealth left by him you have handed over to me, while of the kingship you rob me and have now held it so long a time, not having received it justly. For neither did interreges appoint you, nor did the senate cast a vote for you, nor did you obtain this authority by lawful elections, as did my grandfather and all the kings before him; but the homeless and needy rabble, and that which had lost its citizen rights through condemnations or debts, which cared for nothing public, you hired with pay and corrupted in every way; and not even then did you say you were procuring the rule for yourself, but pretended you would guard it for us, who were orphans and infants; and you came to power, and in the hearing of all you acknowledged that, when we should come to manhood, to me, as the

31.3. elder, you would hand over the rule. You ought, then, if you wished to do what is just, when you handed over to me the house of my grandfather, to have given back the kingship along with the wealth, using as examples the deeds of good and noble guardians, all those who, having received royal children orphaned of their fathers, when they came to manhood rightly and justly restored to them their fathers' and

31.4. ancestral rules. But if I did not yet seem to you to be of fit judgment, but still, by reason of the youth of my age, not capable of governing so great a city, when I came to the strongest prime of body and judgment, being thirty years old, you ought, together with the marriage of your daughter, to have committed to me also the affairs of the city. At that very age you yourself both began to be guardian of our house and to take charge of the kingship."

32.1. "For if you had done these things, it would have remained to you, first, to be called pious and just; then, to reign together with me and to share in every honour, and to be called benefactor and father and saviour and all those most honoured names which are bestowed by men upon noble deeds; and not now, for this the four-and-fortieth year, to rob me of what is mine, you who have got neither a maimed body nor a foolish mind. Then you dare to ask me what terrible thing I have suffered that I count you an enemy, and why

32.2. I accuse you? Answer me, then, Tullius, for what reason you do not think me worthy to inherit my grandfather's honours, and what specious pretext for the deprivation you allege. Is it because you do not think me a legitimate offspring of his line, but some supposititious and bastard child? Why, then, were you guardian of one alien to the family, and why did you give back the house to me when I came to manhood? Or because you still think me an orphan child and unable to manage public affairs — I who am not far from fifty? Lay aside, then, the irony of your shameless

32.3. questions, and cease at last from being wicked; but if you have anything just to say to this, I am ready to entrust the matter to these men as judges, than whom you could not name other better men in the city; but if, slipping away from here — which is ever your custom — you flee to the mob you have demagogued, I will not permit you. For I am prepared both to state what is just and, if you do not yield, to do what is forcible."

33.1. When he had ceased, Tullius, taking up the speech, spoke thus: "It seems, senators, that being a man one must expect all the unexpected things and deem nothing incredible, when even me this Tarquinius is eager to remove from the rule — whom I, taking up as an infant and plotted against by his enemies, saved and reared, and, when he came to manhood, thought fit to take as my kinsman, and, if I should suffer anything, was about to leave as successor of all my possessions. But since everything has fallen out for me against my expectation, and I am accused as though I myself were the wrongdoer, I will lament my fortune later,

33.2. but now I will state my just claims against him. I took the guardianship of you, Tarquinius, when you were left infants, not willingly, but compelled by the circumstances; since those who disputed the kingship had openly killed your grandfather, and were said to be secretly plotting against you and his other kinsmen; and all your relations agreed that, if those men got the rule, they would not leave even a seed of the line of Tarquinius. There was no other protector or guardian of you save a woman, your father's mother, and she through old age herself needing other guardians; but you were left to me alone as guardian of your desolation — me whom you now call alien and in no way related.

33.3. Yet, standing over such affairs, I both punished the murderers of your grandfather and brought you to manhood, and, there being no male offspring, I chose to make you masters of my own possessions. You have the account of the guardianship, Tarquinius, and you could not attempt to say that I lie in any of these things.

34.1. But concerning the kingship — since this is what you accuse me of — hear both how I obtained it and for what reasons I yield it neither to you nor to any other. When I took the charge of the city, perceiving that certain plots were being formed against me, I wished to hand over affairs to the people; and gathering all into an assembly, I gave them back the rule, exchanging for this envied leadership, which has more griefs than pleasures, a quiet free from danger.

34.2. The Romans did not endure my wishing to do this, nor did they think fit to appoint any other master of public affairs, but held me back and gave me the kingship by casting their vote — their own possession, Tarquinius, not yours;

34.3. just as they also brought your grandfather to power, though he was a stranger and in no way related to the former king; and yet King Ancus Marcius left sons in their prime, not grandsons and infants, as Tarquinius left you. But if it were a common law for all that those who succeed to the manifest property and wealth of departed kings should, along with these, receive also their kingships, your grandfather Tarquinius would not have received the leadership when Ancus died, but the elder of his sons.

34.4. But the people of the Romans called to power not the successor of the father, but the one worthy of the rule; for it held that wealth belongs to those who acquire it, but the kingship to those who give it; and that the former, when its owners suffer anything, it befits their successors by birth or by will to receive, but the latter, when those who have received it depart, those who gave it should hold — unless you have some such claim to bring, that your grandfather received the kingship on certain express terms, so as both to hold it himself inalienably and to leave it to you his descendants, and the people had no

34.5. authority to take it from you and give it to me. For if you have any such thing to say, why do you not bring the agreements into the open? But you could not. And if I obtained it not in the best manner, as you say, neither chosen by the interreges nor with the senate handing me affairs nor the other things being done according to law — these men, I suppose, I wrong, and not you, and by these men I deserve to be deprived of the rule, not by

34.6. you. But neither these men nor any other do I wrong. Witness of the authority justly given to me then and now possessed is the time, in which, having held it for forty years, no Roman ever thought me to do wrong, nor did anyone attempt to expel me from the rule, neither the people nor the senate.

35.1. But, that I may let all these things go and come to grips with your words — if I were robbing you of your grandfather's deposit and were holding your kingship against all justice among men, you ought, going to those who gave me the authority, to be indignant and to accuse both me, that I hold what does not belong to me, and those who gave it, that they bestowed on me what was another's; for you would easily have persuaded them, if you had anything just to say.

35.2. But if you did not trust this argument, and thought the city was unjustly ruled by me and that you yourself were better fitted to take the charge of public affairs, it befitted you to do those things: making an examination of my errors and reckoning up your own deeds, to call me to a trial; neither of which you did, but, so many years afterward, as though awakened from a long drunkenness, you now come accusing me — and not even now where you ought.

35.3. For it does not befit you to say these things here — and be not vexed at me for saying this, senators; for I do not say it taking the judgment from you, but wishing to display this man's calumny — but you ought, having first given me notice, to gather the people into an assembly and there to accuse me. But since you have shunned this, I will do it concerning you, and, summoning the people, I will furnish you a judge of whatever you accuse me, and will give it back again to them to decide which of us is the better fitted to hold the rule; and whatever all these men shall judge that I ought to do, I will do.

35.4. And against you this is enough; for it is the same thing to say many just things to senseless adversaries and to say few; for words are by nature unable to carry that which will make them good men.

36.1. But of you I have marvelled, senators, if there are any wishing to remove me from the rule and combined against me with this man. I would gladly learn from them for what wrong they make war on me and at which of my deeds they are vexed. Is it because they know that many men under my rule have perished untried, or been deprived of country, or lost their estates, or unjustly met with some other calamity? Or, while they can name none of these tyrannical wrongs done by me, are they aware of some outrages by me against wedded wives, or insults to maiden daughters, or some other licentiousness toward a free person? Justly indeed, if I have committed any such thing, should I be deprived at once both of the rule and of life.

36.2. Come then — but am I arrogant and, through harshness, oppressive, and can no one bear the self-will I have used in the rule? Yet which of the kings before me lived so moderately in authority and so humane toward all the citizens, as a gentle father using his own sons? — I who did not even wish to hold all the authority which you gave me, preserving the traditions of your fathers, but, having established laws concerning the most important matters, which you all ratified, gave back to you to give and receive justice according to these, and myself was examined first by the laws I fixed against others, obeying like a private man; and of wrongs I did not become the judge of all, but assigned to you to decide the private suits — which none of the former kings did.

36.3. But it seems there is no wrong on account of which any are displeased with me, but my benefactions to the common multitude seem to grieve you, concerning which I have often defended myself to you. But there is no need of these words now; if it seems that this Tarquinius will take better care of public affairs by receiving them, I do not begrudge the city a better ruler; and, giving back the rule to the people who gave it to me and becoming a private man, I will try to make plain to all that I both know how to rule well and am able to be ruled with moderation."

37.1. Having discoursed thus and brought into great shame those combined against him, he dissolved the meeting; and after this, calling the heralds, he ordered them, going through all the lanes, to summon the people into an assembly.

37.2. When the crowd of the city had run together into the Forum, coming forward upon the platform he delivered a long and moving harangue, recounting his warlike deeds, those he had performed while Tarquinius lived and those after his death, and going over his measures of statecraft one by one, from which the commonwealth was thought to have received many great benefits.

37.3. And when much praise met each of his statements, and all were eager to learn for what reasons he was saying these things, at the end he said that Tarquinius accused him of holding unjustly a kingship that belonged to himself; for his grandfather, dying, had left to him the rule along with the wealth, and the people had no authority to give what belonged to another to

37.4. another. When there arose from all an outcry and indignation at this, ordering them to be silent, he asked them not to be vexed nor indignant at the speech, but, if Tarquinius had anything just to say, to call him; and, being informed, if they should find him wronged or better fitted to rule, to hand over to him the protection of the city; for he himself, he said, withdrew from the rule and gave it back to its owners, from whom he had received it.

37.5. When he had said this and wished to come down from the platform, there arose from all an outcry and many entreaties with lamentations that he should yield the rule to no one; and some of them cried out to stone Tarquinius. He, then, fearing summary justice, since the crowds were already rushing upon him, went off in flight together with his companions; but the whole multitude, escorting Tullius with joy and applause and much auspicious acclamation, brought him to his house.

38.1. When Tarquinius had failed in this attempt also, distressed that no help had come to him from the senate, in which he had most trusted, for some time he kept to his house, conversing only with his companions. Then, his wife declaring her opinion that he should no longer be soft nor shrink back, but, casting words aside, should proceed to deeds — first having obtained a reconciliation through friends with Tullius, that, trusting him as one become a friend, Tullius might guard against him less — and thinking that she had suggested the best course, he pretended to repent of what had happened and, beseeching much through friends, asked Tullius to be forgiving.

38.2. And very easily persuading the man, who was by nature easily reconciled and did not think fit to wage implacable war against a daughter and son-in-law, when he had got the suitable occasion, the people being dispersed about the fields for the harvesting of the crops, he went out with his companions, who had swords beneath their cloaks, and, giving the axes to certain attendants and himself taking the royal robe and bringing with him the other insignia of the rule, he came into the Forum and, standing before the senate-house, ordered the herald to summon the senators to the council. There were ready, by arrangement, about the Forum many of the patricians privy to him in the deed

38.3. and urging him on. They, then, were assembling; and to Tullius, who was at his house, someone came and said that Tarquinius had come forth in royal robe and was summoning the senators to the council. And he, marvelling at his boldness, came forth from his house more quickly than wisely, with not many about him. Coming into the council-chamber and seeing Tarquinius seated on the royal chair and having the rest of the royal adornment,

38.4. he said: "Who, most polluted of men, permitted you to take this guise?" And Tarquinius, taking him up, said: "Your own boldness and shamelessness, Tullius — you who, not being even free, but a slave born of a slave-woman whom my grandfather acquired from among the captives, dared to declare yourself king of the Romans." When Tullius heard this, embittered at the speech beyond what was expedient, he rushed at him as if to raise him from the seat.

38.5. And Tarquinius, glad to see this, sprang up from the chair, and seizing the old man, who cried out and called upon his attendants, carried him off. Having got outside the senate-house, lifting him up aloft — being a man in the prime of body and strong — he hurled him down the steps of the senate-house, those that lead to the assembly-place.

38.6. The old man, with difficulty rising from his fall, when he saw all the surroundings full of the company of Tarquinius and a great desertion of his own friends, departed groaning, with a few holding him up and escorting him, streaming with much blood and in evil case throughout his whole body from the fall.

39.1. What followed — terrible to hear, but marvellous and incredible to have been done — is recorded as the deed of his impious daughter. For having learned of her father's entrance into the senate-house and being eager to know what end affairs would take, sitting in her carriage she came to the Forum. Learning what had happened, and beholding Tarquinius standing on the step before the senate-house, she was the first to salute him as king with a loud voice and prayed to the gods that for the advantage of the city of the Romans he might hold the rule.

39.2. And when the others also who had helped to establish the rule had saluted him as king, taking him aside alone she said: "The first things, Tarquinius, have been done by you as was needful; but to hold the kingship securely while Tullius lives is not possible for you. For he will again demagogue the mob against you, if he survive any portion at all of this day; and you know how well-disposed all the common people are to him. But, before he enters his house, send those who shall dispatch him and put him out of the way."

39.3. Having said this and sitting again in her carriage, she went off. Tarquinius, thinking that in this too the most impious of women advised rightly, sends certain of his servants against him with swords; who, with great speed accomplishing the intervening road, overtook Tullius, who was already near his house, and slaughtered him. While the body was still lying freshly slain and twitching,

39.4. his daughter arrived. The lane through which the carriage had to pass being very narrow, the mules, seeing the corpse, were thrown into confusion, and the muleteer who led them, suffering something at the piteous sight, stopped and looked toward his mistress. When she asked what he meant by not driving the team on, he said: "Do you not see, Tullia, your father lying dead, and that there is no other passage save through the corpse?"

39.5. But she, embittered, snatching up the footstool from beneath her feet, hurled it at the muleteer and said: "Will you not drive on, accursed wretch, even through the dead?" And he, groaning more at the calamity than at the blow, drove the mules by force over the corpse. This lane, formerly called Orbius, from that terrible and abominable event is called Wicked by the Romans in their native tongue.

40.1. Such was the end that befell Tullius, after holding the kingship forty-four years. The Romans say that this man was the first to disturb the ancestral customs and usages, having received the rule not from the senate and the people, as all before him, but from the people alone, courting the poor with bribes and corruptions and many other flatteries; and this is the truth.

40.2. For in former times, whenever a king died, the people gave the authority to the council of the senate to establish whatever constitution it preferred; and the senate appointed interreges, and they set up as king the best man, whether from the natives, or from the citizens, or from strangers. If, then, the senate approved the one chosen by them, and the people ratified him by vote, and the auspices confirmed it, this man received the rule; but if any of these was lacking, they named another, and a third, if it should not befall the second also that the things from men and

40.3. the things from the gods were beyond reproach. But Tullius, having at the outset taken the guise of a royal guardian, as I said before, then having won the people over by certain acts of humanity, was declared king by them alone. Being an equitable and moderate man, he dissolved by his later deeds the calumnies arising from his not having done everything according to the laws, and gave many the supposition that, had he not been killed sooner, he would have changed the form of the constitution into a democracy.

40.4. And for this reason chiefly some of the patricians are said to have joined in plotting against him; and being unable by any other means to overthrow his authority, to have brought Tarquinius to power and helped to establish the rule for him, wishing to weaken the common people, who had got no small strength from the constitution of Tullius, and to recover their own dignity, which they formerly had.

40.5. When there arose much tumult throughout the whole city and lamentation at the death of Tullius, Tarquinius, fearing lest, if the corpse were carried through the Forum, as is the custom of the Romans, with the royal adornment and the other things which law prescribes for royal burials, some movement against himself should arise from the common people before he had securely strengthened the rule, did not permit any of the customary rites to be performed for him; but the wife of Tullius, with a few of her friends — she being the daughter of Tarquinius the former king — by night carried the body out of the city, as that of some chance person; and, lamenting much her own and his fortune and uttering ten thousand curses against the son-in-law and the daughter, hid the body in the earth.

40.6. Returning home from the tomb and surviving one day after the burial, on the following night she died. The manner of her death, whatever it was, was unknown to most; some said that, through grief, she gave up life by her own hand and so died; others, that she was made away with by the son-in-law and the daughter, on account of her sympathy and goodwill toward her husband. For these reasons, then, the body of Tullius did not chance upon a royal burial and a conspicuous monument; but his deeds enjoy eternal memory for all time.

40.7. Another divine work also made plain that the man was beloved of the gods, by reason of which even the mythical and incredible supposition about his birth was believed by many to be true, as I said before. For in the temple of Fortune which he himself built, an image of him, of wood overlaid with gold, when a conflagration occurred and all the rest was destroyed, alone remained unharmed by the fire. And even now the temple and all that is in it — all that was done after the conflagration to restore the ancient adornment — are plainly of the new craft; but the image is of ancient workmanship, such as it was before; for it still continues to receive veneration from the Romans. So much concerning Tullius we have received.

41.1. After him Lucius Tarquinius takes over the rule of the Romans, holding it not according to the laws but having seized it by arms, in the fourth year of the sixty-first Olympiad, the one in which Agatharchus the Corcyrean won the foot-race, Thericles being archon at Athens.

41.2. This man, despising the common multitude, and despising also the patricians by whom he had been brought to power, and confounding and corrupting the customs and laws and all the native order with which the former kings had adorned the city, transformed the rule into an avowed tyranny.

41.3. And first he established about himself a guard of the boldest men bearing swords and spears, both natives and foreigners, who, lodging by night about the royal court and following him by day, wherever he went, afforded him much security against those who would plot against him. Then he made his goings-forth neither continuous nor regular, but rare and unexpected; and he transacted public business for the most part at home, and in the presence of his most intimate associates, but few things in the Forum.

41.4. He permitted none who wished to approach, unless he himself should summon someone; nor was he gracious or gentle to those who approached, but, as a tyrant indeed, heavy and harsh in anger and more fearful than cheerful to behold; and the judgments concerning disputed contracts he made not according to justice and the laws, but according to his own dispositions. For these reasons the Romans give him the surname Superbus, which in our tongue means "the arrogant"; and his grandfather they called Priscus, that is, as we should say, "the elder"; for he was of the same name in both names as the younger.

42.1. When he supposed that he now held the rule firmly, having prepared from his associates the most wicked, through them he brought into accusations and capital trials many of the distinguished men — first those disposed hostilely toward him, who were unwilling that Tullius should fall from the rule; then also of the others, those whom he supposed deemed the change grievous and those who had much wealth.

42.2. And those who brought them under the trials, charging some on one false accusation and some on another, but most of all charging them with plotting against the king, accused them before him as judge. He condemned some to death, others to exile, and, taking away the wealth of those slain and those expelled, paid out some small portion to the accusers,

42.3. but himself kept the greater part. Many, then, of the powerful, before being convicted of the trials brought against them, knowing for what reasons they were plotted against, willingly left the city to the tyrant; and they became far more numerous than the others. There were some too who were secretly destroyed by him, seized from their houses and from the fields, men worthy of record, of whom not even the bodies appeared.

42.4. When he had destroyed the best part of the senate by deaths and perpetual exiles, he himself established another senate, bringing forward his own associates to the honours of those who had departed. And not even to these men did he permit to do or to say anything that he himself had not commanded.

42.5. So that all the senators who were left in the council, of those enrolled under Tullius — who till then had been at variance with the commons and had thought the change of constitution would be for their own good (for such promises Tarquinius held out to them, deceiving and cheating them) — then learning that they no longer had a share in any public matter, but that they too, along with the commons, had been deprived of free speech, lamented and suspected the future to be more terrible than the present, but were compelled to be content with the present, having no power to prevent what was being done.

43.1. Seeing this, the commons supposed that they were suffering justly and rejoiced through simplicity, as though the tyranny would be grievous to those men alone, but free of danger to themselves. But to them too, not long after, came still more grievous things. For the laws written by Tullius, by which they received justice from one another on equal terms and were in no way harmed by the patricians, as before, in matters of contracts, he abolished all; and he did not even leave the tablets on which they were written, but, ordering these too to be taken down from the Forum, he destroyed them.

43.2. Then he abolished the contributions from the assessments and restored the original method; and whenever he had need of money, the poorest man paid the same sum as the richest. This measure consumed much of the common multitude, who were compelled, at the very first contribution, to pay ten drachmae per head. And all the gatherings which formerly took place — of villagers or members of curiae or neighbours, both in the city and in the fields, for sacred rites and sacrifices common to all — he proclaimed should no longer be held, lest many coming together to the same place should make secret counsels with one another about the overthrow of the rule.

43.3. And he had spies scattered in many places and searchers-out of what was said and done, who escaped the notice of the many, who, descending into conversation with those near them and sometimes themselves speaking against the tyrant, made trial of each one's mind; and then those whom they perceived to be vexed at the established state of things they denounced to the tyrant; and the punishments against those convicted were bitter and inexorable.

44.1. And it did not suffice him to transgress the law against the commons in these ways only; but, choosing out from the multitude as much as was faithful to himself and serviceable for warlike needs, he compelled the rest to labour at the works in the city, thinking it the greatest danger for monarchs when the most wicked and poorest of the citizens are at leisure, and at the same time having the desire, during his own rule, to complete the works left half-finished by his grandfather: to carry the drainage-channels for the waters, which the elder Tarquinius had begun to dig, down to the river, and to enclose with roofed colonnades the amphitheatrical hippodrome, which had nothing outside its foundations.

44.2. At these works, then, all the poor laboured, receiving from him a moderate ration of corn: some quarrying stone, some cutting timber, some driving the wagons that carried these, some themselves bearing the loads on their shoulders; others mining the underground tunnels and forming the vaults within them and raising the colonnades; and serving these artisans who did this work were smiths and carpenters and stonemasons, withdrawn from their private occupations and held to the public needs.

44.3. The people, worn down at these works, took no respite; so that the patricians, seeing their hardships and servitudes, rejoiced in their turn and forgot their own griefs; for neither side attempted to prevent what was being done.

45.1. Reckoning that for those who have got their rule not according to the laws but acquired it by arms there is need not only of a native guard but also of a foreign one, Tarquinius was eager to make the most distinguished man of the Latin nation, and the most powerful of all, his friend by joining him to himself through the marriage of his daughter. This man was called Octavius Mamilius and traced his descent to Telegonus, the son of Odysseus and Circe, and dwelt in the city of Tusculum, and was thought to be sagacious in political matters as few are and capable of commanding in wars.

45.2. Having this man as friend, and through him gaining over the best of those managing public affairs in each city, he then attempted to make trial of wars in the open field also and to lead out an army against the Sabines, who were unwilling to be subject to his commands but thought they had been released from their agreements ever since Tullius died, with whom they had made the agreements.

45.3. Knowing this, he gave notice through messengers that those accustomed to deliberate on behalf of the Latin commonwealth should come to the assembly held at Ferentinum, fixing a certain day, as one about to take counsel with them concerning common and great affairs.

45.4. They, then, were present, but Tarquinius himself, who had summoned them, was late. And when much time had passed as they sat, and the matter seemed to most an insult, a certain man dwelling in the city of Corilla, powerful in wealth and friends and valiant in war and not unable to deliver a political speech, Turnus Herdonius by name — at variance with Mamilius through rivalry over public affairs and hating Tarquinius on account of Mamilius, because he had thought fit to take that man as kinsman instead of himself — made a great accusation of Tarquinius, recounting both the other deeds of the man, in which a certain self-will and harshness seemed to be present, and his not being present at the meeting himself, the very one who had summoned it, when all the others were present.

45.5. When Mamilius defended him and ascribed Tarquinius's delay to certain necessary causes and asked that the meeting be put off to the following day, the presidents of the Latins, persuaded, adjourned the council.

46.1. On the next day Tarquinius was present, and when the council had assembled, after a few words concerning the delay, he immediately made speeches about the leadership, as belonging to him by right, since his grandfather Tarquinius had held it, having acquired it by war, and he produced the agreements made by the cities with that man.

46.2. Having delivered a long discourse concerning his right and the agreements, and having promised that he would greatly benefit the cities if they remained in the friendship, he at length tried to persuade them to join in a campaign against the Sabine nation.

46.3. When he had ceased speaking, Turnus, the one who had reproached him for his lateness, came forward and would not allow the councillors to yield the leadership to the man, as belonging to him neither by right nor to be given for the advantage of the Latins; and he delivered many words on both points, saying that the agreements which they had made with his grandfather, handing over the leadership, had been dissolved after that man's death, because it had not been added in writing to the agreements that the same gift should belong also to the descendants of Tarquinius; and declaring the man who claimed to inherit his grandfather's gifts the most lawless and wicked of all men, and recounting his deeds which he had performed in order to

46.4. seize the rule of the Romans. Having delivered many terrible accusations of him, at the end he taught that he did not even hold the kingship of the Romans according to the laws, having received it from willing subjects like the kings before him, but having prevailed by arms and force and established a tyrannical monarchy; that he killed some of the citizens, drove others from their country, cut off the property of others, and took away the free speech and freedom of all at once. He said it was great folly and god-stricken madness to expect and believe any good and humane thing from a wicked and impious character — as though one who had not spared his nearest and dearest kin would spare strangers; and he urged that, while they had not yet taken the bridle of slavery, they should fight that he might not put it on, conjecturing from the terrible things which others had suffered what would befall themselves.

47.1. When Turnus had made such an attack and the multitude had been greatly moved by the words, Tarquinius asked for the following day for his defence and, having got it, when the council had been dissolved, calling together his most intimate associates, he considered with them in what manner he should deal with the matter. The rest, then, suggested the words he should say in his defence and reckoned up the ways in which he should win over the multitude. But Tarquinius himself said there was no need of any of these things for the affair, and declared his own opinion: not to refute the charges, but

47.2. to make away with the accuser himself. When all praised the opinion, having arranged with them the matters concerning the attack, he undertook a thing least able to fall within human foresight and guard. For, finding out the most wicked of the servants who conveyed the baggage-animals and the gear of Turnus, and corrupting them with money, he persuaded them to take from him by night many swords and bring them into the lodging of their master and to lay them away, hidden among the baggage.

47.3. On the next day, when the assembly had gathered, coming forward, he said that the defence concerning the charges was brief, and made the accuser himself judge of all the charges. "For this Turnus, councillors," he said, "having become judge of all those things of which he now accuses me, himself acquitted me, when he wished to take my daughter to wife.

47.4. But when he was rejected from the marriage, as was natural — for who of those having sense would have spurned Mamilius, the noblest and most powerful of the Latins, and thought fit to take as kinsman this man, who cannot trace his line even to a third grandfather? — vexed at this, he now comes accusing me. But he ought, if he knew me to be such as he now charges, not to have been eager then to take me as father-in-law; and if he thought me good, when he asked for my daughter, not now to accuse me as wicked.

47.5. And concerning myself I say so much; but for you, councillors, who run the greatest of dangers, it is not now to be considered whether I am good or wicked — for this it will be possible for you to consider even afterward — but concerning your own safety and the freedom of your countries. For you, the foremost in the cities and those who manage public affairs, are being plotted against by this fine demagogue, who has prepared, having killed the most distinguished of you, to attack the rule of the Latins, and has come for this very

47.6. purpose. And these things I say not conjecturing, but knowing exactly, an information having come to me in the past night by one of those who shared in the conspiracy. And I will furnish you an indisputable proof of my words in deed, if you are willing to go to his lodging, by showing the weapons hidden in it."

48.1. When he said this, all cried out and, fearing for the men, asked that the matter be proved and that he not deceive them. And Turnus, as one who had not foreknown the plot, gladly said he accepted the examination and called upon the presidents to the search of the lodging, and said that one of two things ought to happen: either that he himself should die, if he were found to have prepared weapons beyond those for the road, or that the man who had lied against him should

48.2. undergo punishment. This seemed good; and those who went to his lodging found among the baggage the swords hidden by the servants. After this, no longer permitting Turnus to obtain a hearing, they cast him into a certain pit and, heaping the earth upon him while he yet lived, destroyed him forthwith.

48.3. And Tarquinius, having praised before the assembly as a common benefactor of the cities, for having saved the best men, they make him leader of the nation on the same terms on which they had earlier made Tarquinius his grandfather and afterward Tullius; and writing the agreements on pillars and cutting victims over the keeping of the covenants, they dissolved the council.

49.1. Having obtained the leadership of the Latins, Tarquinius sent embassies also to the cities of the Hernicans and to those of the Volscians, inviting these too to friendship and alliance. The Hernicans, then, all voted to make the alliance; but of the Volscian nation only two cities accepted the invitations, the Ecetrani and the Antiates. And taking forethought that the agreements should remain for all time for the cities, Tarquinius resolved to designate a common temple of the Romans and Latins and Hernicans and those of the Volscians enrolled in the alliance, that, coming together each year to the appointed place, they might hold festival and feast together and share in common sacred rites.

49.2. When all had gladly accepted the matter, he designated a place where they should hold the assembly, a high mountain situated almost in the middle of the nations, which overlooks the city of the Albans, on which he enacted that festivals should be held every year and that there should be a truce for all toward all, and that common sacrifices should be performed to the so-called Latiarian Jupiter and common feasts held, ordering what each city should furnish for the rites and what portion each should receive. The cities that shared in the festival and the sacrifice were forty-seven.

49.3. These festivals and sacrifices the Romans perform down to our times, calling them the Latin Festival; and the cities that share in the rites bring to them, some lambs, some cheeses, some a measure of milk, and some some similar kind of cake; and one bull being sacrificed in common by all, each receives its appointed portion. They sacrifice on behalf of all, and the Romans hold the leadership of the rites.

50.1. When he had strengthened his rule by these alliances too, he resolved to lead out an army against the Sabines, having chosen of the Romans themselves those whom he least suspected, if they should become masters of arms, of aiming at freedom, and adding the force that had come from the allies, which was much greater than the citizen force.

50.2. Having ravaged their fields and defeated in battle those who came to meet him, he led the force against the so-called Pometini, who inhabited the city of Suessa and were thought to be the most prosperous of all their neighbours, and through their great prosperity grievous and burdensome to all, charging them with certain plunderings and brigandages, for which, when asked for satisfaction, they gave arrogant answers. They were ready, awaiting the war and in arms.

50.3. Joining battle with them about the borders and killing many, and routing the rest and shutting them up within their wall, when they no longer came forth from the city, he encamped beside them and surrounded them with a ditch and palisade and made continuous assaults upon the walls. Those within for a time fought back and held out long against the hardship; but when supplies failed them, weakening in body and getting no reinforcement nor rest, but toiling themselves both day and night, they are taken by storm.

50.4. Having become master of the city, he destroyed those in arms, but permitted the soldiers to carry off as captives their wives and children and those who survived to become prisoners and the multitude of servants, not even easy to count, and to drive and carry off the other property of the city, whatever each might happen upon, both within the wall and in the fields; but the silver and gold, as much as was found, he gathered into one place and, taking out the tenth for the building of a temple, divided the remaining moneys among the soldiers.

50.5. So great, then, was the silver and gold that was taken, that each of the soldiers received five minae of silver, and the silver tithed for the gods came to not less than four hundred talents.

51.1. While he was still tarrying at Suessa, someone came announcing that the best youth of the Sabines had gone forth and, having invaded the Roman territory with two great armies, were plundering the fields — one having pitched its camp near Eretum, the other about Fidenae; and that, unless some force should oppose them, all there would be lost.

51.2. When he heard this, leaving at Suessa a small part of the army with orders to guard the spoils and the baggage, taking up the rest of the force light-equipped, he led it against those encamped near Eretum and pitched his camp on high ground, leaving a small space between. When it seemed good to the commanders of the Sabines to give battle at dawn, having sent for the army at Fidenae, Tarquinius, learning their intention — for the one carrying the letters from the commanders there to those yonder was captured — used the following stratagem against what had befallen from chance.

51.3. Dividing his force in two, he sent the one part by night, unobserved by the enemy, onto the road leading from Fidenae; the other, when bright day came, he drew up and led out of the camp as if for battle. And the Sabines, taking courage, came out against them, seeing the enemy not many and thinking their own force from Fidenae would presently be at hand. These, then, having taken their stand, fought, and the contest was for a long time equally balanced; but those sent forward beforehand by Tarquinius, turning back by night from the road and getting in the rear of the Sabines, came on.

51.4. The Sabines, seeing these and recognizing them by their arms and standards, lost their reckoning and, throwing away their arms, tried to save themselves. But safety was impossible for most, surrounded in a circle by enemies, and the Roman cavalry, pressing on, shut them off on every side; so that some few got out from under the danger, but the greater part were cut down by the enemy or surrendered themselves. Nor did those left at the camp hold out, but the rampart too was taken at the first assault; and there, along with the Sabines' own goods, all the Romans' property, with many captives still untouched, was recovered for those who had lost it.

52.1. When the first trial had gone according to his purpose, Tarquinius, taking up his force, came against the Sabines encamped at Fidenae, to whom the destruction of their own was not yet plain. They too chanced to have come forth beforehand from the camp and to be already on the road; and when they came near and saw fixed on spear-points the heads of their own commanders — for the Romans held them out to terrify the enemy — learning that their other army had been destroyed, they performed no further noble deed, but, turning to supplications and entreaties, surrendered themselves.

52.2. Both armies having been so shamefully and miserably swept away, the Sabines, shut up into narrow hopes, and fearing for their cities lest they be taken by assault, sent embassies concerning peace, surrendering themselves to be subject to Tarquinius and henceforth tributary. Having made a treaty with them and received the cities on the same terms, he went off to Suessa. Thence, taking up the force left there and the spoils and the other baggage, he returned to Rome, bringing back the army enriched.

52.3. After this also he made many incursions into the Volscian territory, sometimes with the whole force, sometimes with a part, and became master of much booty. And when most things were now going according to his mind, a war arose from his neighbours, both long in time — for it was waged for seven years continuously — and great by reason of grievous and unexpected sufferings. From what causes it began, and what end it had — since it was accomplished by treacherous deceit and an extraordinary stratagem — I will relate in a few words.

53.1. There was a city of the Latin race, a colony of the Albans, distant from Rome a hundred stadia, lying on the road that leads to Praeneste; they called it Gabii. It is now no longer wholly inhabited, except for those parts where there are inns along the road; but at that time it was as populous as any and large. One might conjecture its size and dignity from beholding the ruins of houses in many places and the circuit of its wall,

53.2. for most of it still stands. Into this city flowed together some of the Pometini who had escaped from Suessa when Tarquinius took their city, and many of the exiles from Rome; these, begging and importuning the Gabini to avenge them, and promising many gifts if they should return to their own, declaring the overthrow of the tyrant possible and easy, since those in the city too would join, persuaded them — the Volscians also having added their zeal, for they too sent embassies asking for alliance — to take up the war against Tarquinius.

53.3. After this there were invasions and incursions with great armies into one another's land, and battles, as was natural, sometimes few against few, sometimes all against all, in which often the Gabini, routing the Romans up to their walls and laying many low, plundered the country without fear; and often the Romans, pushing back the Gabini and shutting them into the city, carried off many slaves and much booty of theirs.

54.1. These things happening continually, both sides were compelled to fortify whatever was defensible in the country and to establish garrisons in them for the refuge of the farmers; from which, setting out, they destroyed the brigand-bands, and, if they saw any small part separated from a large army and, as is natural in foraging, undisciplined through contempt, descending in a body they destroyed it; and through fear of one another's sudden inroads they built up and fortified with ditches whatever of the cities was assailable and easy to take by ladders.

54.2. But Tarquinius was the more active about these things, and he strengthened with abundant labour the part of the city's circuit that faced the Gabini, digging a wider ditch and raising a higher wall and dividing the place with closer towers; for at this part especially the city seemed to be unfortified, being elsewhere fairly secure and hard of approach throughout the rest of its circuit.

54.3. And there was bound to befall — what is wont to happen to all cities in long wars, the land being ravaged by the continual inroads of the enemy and no longer bearing crops — a scarcity of all food in both, and terrible despondency about the future. But the lack of necessities pressed the Romans worse than the Gabini, and the poorest of them, suffering most, thought they ought to make agreements with the Gabini and conclude the war on whatever terms those should wish.

55.1. Tarquinius being distressed at what had happened, neither enduring to conclude the war shamefully nor able to hold out any longer, but contriving all manner of attempts and putting together every kind of guile, the eldest of his sons, Sextus by name, having communicated his plan to his father alone, and being thought to attempt a bold thing involving great danger, yet not impossible — his father consenting that he should do as he wished — feigns a quarrel with his father about the conclusion of the war;

55.2. and having been scourged by him with rods in the Forum and otherwise outraged, so that the matter became notorious, first he sent of his companions the most trustworthy as deserters to tell the Gabini secretly that he had resolved to make war on his father by going over to them, if he should receive pledges that they would protect him as they did the other exiles from Rome and would not give him up to his father, hoping to settle their own private enmities to their own

55.3. advantage. When the Gabini had gladly heard the proposal and agreed to do him no wrong, he came, bringing with him many companions and clients, as a deserter, and, that they might the more believe him to be telling the truth about his revolt from his father, bringing much silver and gold; and there flocked to him after this many of those from the city, pretending to flee the tyranny,

55.4. and there was now a strong band about him. The Gabini, thinking a great advantage had accrued to them, many having come over to them, and hoping that before long they would have Rome in their power, and still more deceived by what the deserter from his father did, going forth continually into the country and seizing much plunder — for his father, knowing beforehand to what places he would come, had provided abundant booty and the strongholds unguarded, and continually sent those who were to be destroyed by him, choosing from the citizens those whom he held in suspicion — from all these things thinking the man a faithful friend to them and a good general, and many of them too having been bribed by him with money, they bring him to the supreme command.

56.1. Having become master of so great an authority, Sextus, by deceit and trickery, sent secretly, unobserved by the Gabini, one of his servants to his father, both to declare the authority he had received and to learn

56.2. what he ought to do. Tarquinius, not wishing even the servant to know what he ordered his son to do, taking the messenger, came forth into the garden adjoining the palace. There chanced to be poppies growing in it, already full of seed and at the season of harvest; passing through these, with his staff he kept striking off the head of each poppy that overtopped the rest.

56.3. Having done this, he sent off the messenger without any answer to him who often asked — imitating, as it seems to me, the device of Thrasybulus the Milesian. For he too, when Periander the tyrant of the Corinthians once asked, through the messenger sent to him, how he might most securely hold the rule, sent no word in answer, but bidding the one who had come from him to follow, led him through a field sown with grain and, breaking off the ears that overtopped, threw them on the ground, teaching that one ought to lop off and destroy the most eminent of the citizens.

56.4. Tarquinius then having done much the like, Sextus, understanding his father's meaning — that he bade him do away with the most eminent of the Gabini — summoned the multitude into an assembly and, making a long speech about himself, that, having taken refuge in their faith together with his companions, he was in danger of being seized by certain men and given up to his father, was ready to lay down the command, and wished to depart from the city before suffering any terrible thing, weeping at the same time and bewailing his own fortune, like those who in truth are in agony for their lives.

57.1. When the multitude was roused and with great eagerness inquired who they were that meant to betray him, he named the most distinguished of the Gabini, Antistius Petro, who, having taken many earnest measures in peace and fulfilled many commands in war, had become the most distinguished of all; and when the man defended himself and, conscious of nothing, submitted to every examination, Sextus said he wished to search his house, sending others, and that he himself would remain in the assembly with the man until those sent should come.

57.2. For he had corrupted some of his servants with money, who had received the letters contrived for the destruction of Petro, sealed with his father's seal, and laid them away within. When those sent to the search — for Petro made no objection, but allowed his house to be searched — found where the letters were hidden, they came to the assembly bringing many other sealed letters and the one written to Antistius; and Sextus, saying he recognized his father's seal, broke it and, giving it to the secretary, ordered him to read it.

57.3. It was written therein that, best of all, his son should be given up to him alive and the agreed-upon rewards received, but, if this were impossible, that his head should be cut off and sent. And for him who should do this, and for those who shared in the deed, besides the other rewards he had earlier promised, he said he would give the citizenship at Rome and enrol them all in the number of the patricians, and bestow houses and allotments and

57.4. many other great gifts. At these things the Gabini, being enraged, kill Antistius — who was struck dumb at the unexpected calamity and could not even utter a voice for his misfortune — by pelting him with stones; and the search and punishment of the others who had planned the same things as Petro they entrusted to Sextus to carry out. He, entrusting the guarding of the gates to his own companions, that those under accusation might not escape him, sending to the houses of the most distinguished men, killed many of the Gabini, and good men.

58.1. While these things were being done, there being a tumult in the city as over so great an evil, Tarquinius, learning what was happening through letters, came up leading his force, and about the middle of the night, having got near the city, when the gates were opened by those prepared for the purpose, entered and without effort became master of the city.

58.2. When the calamity was known, all bewailing themselves as to what they would suffer, and expecting slaughters and enslavements and all the terrible things that befall those captured by tyrants — or, if they fared best, having condemned themselves to slavery and confiscation of goods and the like — Tarquinius did none of the things they expected and feared, although he was bitter in anger and inexorable in his punishments of enemies.

58.3. For he neither killed any of the Gabini nor expelled them from the city nor punished them with loss of citizen rights or confiscation of goods; but, summoning the multitude into an assembly and changing from a tyrannical to a kingly manner, he said he gave them back their own city and conceded to them the property they had, and along with these granted to all the equal citizenship of the Romans — not through goodwill toward the Gabini, but that, by doing this, he might hold the rule of the Romans more securely; thinking the strongest guard of himself and his children would be the faith of those who beyond hope had been saved and had recovered all their own.

58.4. And, that no fear about the future might remain to them, nor any doubt whether these things would remain firm for them, having written down on what just terms they should be friends, he completed the oaths concerning these matters in the assembly forthwith and swore over the victims. Of these oaths there is a memorial lying at Rome in the temple of Jupiter Pistius, whom the Romans call Sancus — a wooden shield covered with the hide of the ox sacrificed over the oaths at that time, inscribed in archaic letters with the agreements made by them. Having done these things and appointed his son Sextus king of the Gabini, he led off his force. The war against the Gabini, then, had such an end.

59.1. After this deed Tarquinius, giving the people rest from campaigns and wars, busied himself about the building of the temples, being eager to fulfil the vows of his grandfather. For that man, fighting in his last war against the Sabines, had vowed to Jupiter and Juno and Athena that, if he should prevail in the battle, he would build them temples; and the crag where the gods were to be established he had worked out with great substructures and mounds, as I said in the preceding Book, but had not lived to complete the building of the temples. This work, then, Tarquinius, choosing to accomplish from the tithe of the spoils from Suessa, set all the craftsmen at the labours.

59.2. Here, it is said, a certain marvellous prodigy underground occurred while the foundations were being dug and the digging had already gone to a great depth: there was found the head of a man newly slain, having the face like that of a living man, and the blood flowing down from the severing still warm and fresh.

59.3. Seeing this prodigy, Tarquinius ordered the workmen to stay the digging; and summoning the native diviners, he inquired of them what the prodigy meant to signify. When they made no declaration, but referred the knowledge of such things to the Tyrrhenians, inquiring of them and learning who was the most distinguished of the prodigy-interpreters among the Tyrrhenians, he sent to him the most reputable of the citizens as envoys.

60.1. When these men had come to the house of the prodigy-interpreter, they met a youth coming out, to whom, saying that they were envoys of the Romans wishing to meet the diviner, they asked him to announce it to him. And the young man said: "He whom you wish to meet is my father; he is busy at present, but it will be possible for you to go in to him after a little time.

60.2. And while you await him, declare to me on what business you have come. For it will be to your advantage, if you are about through inexperience to err in the question, to be taught by me to make no mistake; for no small part of the observations in divination is a right question." It seemed good to the men to do so, and they tell him the prodigy. And he, when he had heard it, after a short pause, said: "Hear, men of Rome; the prodigy my father will interpret for you, and will lie in nothing — for it is not lawful for a diviner; but as to what, in speaking and answering the questions, you may say and be free from error and falsehood — for it concerns you to have foreknown these things — learn from me.

60.3. When you have related the prodigy to him, saying that he does not exactly understand what you say, he will mark off with his staff a portion of the earth, some part or other; then he will say to you, 'This is the Tarpeian hill, and this part of it looks toward the east, this toward the west,

60.4. this northern part, and this opposite, southern.' Pointing these out with his staff, he will inquire of you in which of these parts the head was found. What, then, do I advise you to answer? Not to admit that the prodigy was found in any of these places which he, pointing with his staff, may inquire about, but to say that it was at Rome, among us, on the Tarpeian hill. If you keep these answers and are in no way led aside by him, recognizing that what is fated cannot be altered, he will interpret to you what the prodigy means to signify, and will not conceal it."

61.1. Having learned these things, the envoys, when the old man had leisure and someone came forth to fetch them, going in, tell the diviner the prodigy. And as he played the sophist, drawing on the earth circular lines and again other straight ones, and making concerning each place his questions about the finding, the envoys, untroubled in mind, kept the same answer, as the diviner's son had suggested to them, always naming Rome and the Tarpeian hill and asking the interpreter not to appropriate the sign, but to speak from

61.2. the best and the most just. Not being able to deceive the men nor to appropriate the omen, the diviner says to them: "Men of Rome, tell your fellow citizens that it is fated that this place, in which you found the head, should become the head of all Italy." From that time the hill is called Capitoline, after the head found in it; for the Romans call heads capita.

61.3. Hearing these things from the envoys, Tarquinius set the craftsmen to the works; and he wrought out most of the temple, but did not live to complete the whole work, being expelled from his rule sooner; rather it was in the third consulship that the city of the Romans brought it to completion. It was made standing upon a lofty foundation, eight hundred feet in circuit, having each side nearly two hundred feet; and one would find but a small difference of the excess of the length over the breadth, not a whole fifteen feet.

61.4. For upon the same foundations the temple built after the conflagration, in the time of our fathers, was found to differ from the ancient one only in the costliness of the material — being surrounded, on the front part that looks toward the south, with a triple row of columns, and on the sides with a single row. In it are three parallel chambers having common sides: the middle that of Jupiter, and on either side that of Juno and that of Athena, covered by one pediment and one roof.

62.1. There is told also another very marvellous piece of good fortune said to have belonged to the city of the Romans in the rule of Tarquinius, bestowed by the goodwill of some god or divinity; which not for a short time, but throughout the whole life of the city, has often saved it from great evils.

62.2. A certain woman, not of the country, came to the tyrant wishing to sell nine books full of Sibylline oracles. When Tarquinius did not think fit to buy the books at the price asked, she went away and burned three of them; and after no long time, bringing the remaining six, she offered them for sale at the same price. Being thought foolish and laughed at for asking the same price for the fewer that she could not get even for the more, she went away again and burned half of those that remained, and bringing the remaining

62.3. three, asked the same amount of gold. Marvelling at the woman's purpose, Tarquinius sent for the augurs and, relating the matter to them, asked what he ought to do. They, learning from certain signs that he had turned away a god-sent good, and declaring it a great misfortune that he had not bought all the books, bade him count out to the woman the gold she asked and take the oracles that remained.

62.4. The woman, then, having given the books and bidden him keep them carefully, vanished from among men; and Tarquinius, choosing two distinguished men of the citizens and joining to them two public slaves, committed to those men the guarding of the books. Of these, one, Marcus Atilius, thought to have done some wrong concerning the trust and being denounced by one of the public slaves, he sewed up in an oxhide, as a parricide, and cast into the sea.

62.5. After the expulsion of the kings the city, taking over the charge of the oracles, appoints the most distinguished men its guardians, who hold this care for life, being released from campaigns and from the other public business of the city; and it sets public slaves beside them, without whom it does not permit the men to make their inspections of the oracles. In short, the Romans guard nothing, neither holy nor sacred possession, so much as the Sibylline prophecies. They use them whenever the senate so votes, when sedition seizes the city, or some great misfortune befalls in war, or some prodigies and great apparitions, hard to interpret, appear to them, as has often happened. These oracles remained until the so-called Marsic War, lying underground in the temple of Capitoline Jupiter in a stone chest, guarded by ten men.

62.6. But after the third year past the hundred and seventieth Olympiad, the temple being burned — whether from a plot, as some think, or of itself — these too, along with the other offerings of the god, were destroyed by the fire. Those now existing are collected from many places, some brought from the cities in Italy, some from Erythrae in Asia, by decree of the senate three envoys being sent for the transcription; and others copied from other cities and from private men; among which are found some interpolated into the Sibylline oracles, and they are detected by the so-called acrostics; and I say what Terentius Varro has recorded in his treatise on theology.

63.1. Having accomplished these things in peace and in wars and having founded two colonies — the one called Signia not by deliberate purpose but of itself, the soldiers having wintered in the place and built the camp so that it differed in no way from a city; Circeii by deliberate reckoning, because it lay well, in relation to the Pomptine plain, the largest of those about Latium, and to the sea adjoining it; it is a peninsula-like crag, fairly high, lying on the Tyrrhenian sea, where the story is that Circe, the daughter of the Sun, dwelt — and having assigned both colonies to two of his sons as founders, Circeii to Arruns and Signia to Titus, having then no further fear concerning the rule, on account of the outrage to a woman, whom his eldest son Sextus violated, he is driven both from the rule and from the city, the divine power having foretold to him the calamity that was to come upon his house by many

63.2. other omens, and by this last. Eagles, coming together into the garden adjoining the palace in the season of spring, built a nest on the top of a lofty palm-tree. While these eagles had their young still unfledged, vultures, flying upon them in a body, scattered the nest and killed the young, and the eagles coming back from foraging they drove from the palm-tree, tearing and striking them with their talons.

63.3. Seeing these omens, and guarding himself, in case he might be able to ward off his fate, Tarquinius was not strong enough to overcome destiny; but, the patricians attacking him and the people uniting in mind, he was expelled from the rule. Who they were that began the uprising, and by what means they came to the deed, I will try to set forth in a few words.

64.1. Tarquinius was besieging the city of the Ardeates, making the pretext that they received the exiles from Rome and helped them concerning their return; but, as the truth was, plotting against it on account of its wealth, it being the most prosperous of the cities in Italy. The Ardeates fighting back nobly and the siege becoming long, both those at the camp, worn out by the prolongation of the war, and those in the city, exhausted by the contributions, were ready for revolt, if any beginning should be made.

64.2. At this very time Sextus, the eldest of the sons of Tarquinius, having been sent by his father to a city which was called Collatia to render certain military services, was lodged with a kinsman, Lucius Tarquinius

64.3. surnamed Collatinus. This man Fabius says was the son of Egerius, concerning whom I have shown before that he was the brother's son of Tarquinius the former king of the Romans, and, appointed governor of Collatia, was himself called Collatinus from his stay in that city and left the same surname to his descendants; but I am persuaded that this man too was the grandson of Egerius, if indeed he was of the same age as the sons of Tarquinius, as Fabius and the other historians have recorded; for the chronology confirms this supposition for me.

64.4. Collatinus, then, chanced to be at the camp at that time; but the wife who dwelt with him, a Roman, the daughter of Lucretius, a distinguished man, entertained him as a kinsman of her husband with much zeal and friendliness. This woman, the fairest and most virtuous of the women in Rome, Sextus attempted to corrupt, having earlier still restrained himself, whenever he was lodged with his kinsman, but then thinking he had a fitting occasion.

64.5. When after supper he had gone away to sleep, having waited through a great part of the night, when he thought all were asleep, rising he came to the chamber in which he knew Lucretia was sleeping, and, unobserved by those sleeping at the doors of the chamber, entered, holding a sword.

65.1. Standing over the bed — the woman being awakened at once with the sense of the noise and asking who it was — he told his name and bade her be silent and remain in the chamber, threatening to slay her if she should attempt to flee or cry out. Having terrified the woman in this way, he held out to her two choices, of which he asked her to choose which she preferred, death with

65.2. shame or life with happiness. "For if you consent," he said, "to gratify me, I will make you my wife, and you shall reign with me — now over the city which my father has given me, and after his death over the Romans and the Latins and the Tyrrhenians and all the others over whom he rules. For I know that I shall receive my father's kingship, as is just, being the eldest of his sons. And as for all the good things which kings have, of all which you shall be mistress with me, what need is there to teach you who know it well?

65.3. But if you attempt to resist, wishing to save your chastity, I will kill you, and, slaughtering one of the servants upon you, I will lay your bodies together and will say that, having caught you behaving shamefully with the slave, I punished you, avenging the outrage to my kinsman; so that your end will be shameful and reproachful, and your body will obtain neither burial nor any other of the customary rites."

65.4. As he was vehement, both threatening and entreating and swearing he spoke the truth in each of his sayings, Lucretia came into a constraint, fearing the dishonour about her death, to yield and to suffer him to accomplish what he wished.

66.1. When day came, he departed to the camp, having fulfilled a wicked and destructive desire; but Lucretia, bearing terribly what had happened, as quickly as she could, mounting her carriage, set off for Rome, clad in black raiment and hiding a small dagger beneath her robe, neither greeting any of those who met and saluted her, nor answering those who wished to learn what she had suffered, but thoughtful and downcast, with her eyes full of tears.

66.2. When she came into her father's house — there chanced to be some kinsmen present with him — taking hold of his knees and falling about him, for a time she wept, uttering no word; then, when her father raised her up and asked her to say what she had suffered, she said: "I become your suppliant, father, having endured a terrible and irremediable outrage; avenge me and do not overlook your own daughter,

66.3. who has suffered worse than death." When he marvelled, and all the others, and he asked her to say who had outraged her and what kind of outrage, she said: "You shall hear my calamities, father, before long; but grant me first this favour which I ask: summon as many friends and kinsmen as you can, that they may hear from me, who have suffered the terrible things, and not from others. And when you have learned the shameful and terrible constraints that seized me, take counsel with them how you will avenge me and yourself, and make not long the time between."

67.1. When, by a swift and earnest summons, the most distinguished men had come together into the house, as she asked, she tells them the whole matter, taking it up from the beginning. And after this, greeting her father and making many supplications both of him and of those present with him, and praying to the gods and divinities to grant her a swift release from life, she draws the dagger which she kept hidden beneath her robes, and, dealing a single blow through her breast, drives the sword as far as the heart.

67.2. An outcry and lamentation and beating of breasts of the women seizing the whole house, the father, throwing himself about the body, embraced and called upon her and tended her as if she would recover from the wound; but she, gasping in his arms and breathing out her life, dies. To the Romans present the calamity seemed so terrible and pitiable that with one voice they all cried out that it were ten thousand times better for them to die for freedom than to overlook such outrages committed by the tyrants.

67.3. There was among them a certain Publius Valerius, a descendant of one of the Sabines who came with Tatius to Rome, an active and prudent man. He is sent by them to the camp, both to tell the husband of Lucretia what had happened and, with him, to bring about the revolt of the soldiery from the tyrants.

67.4. Just as he had gone out of the gates, by divine providence Collatinus met him coming to the city from the camp, knowing nothing of the evils that had seized his house; and with him Lucius Junius, whose surname was Brutus — which, interpreted into the Greek tongue, would be "stupid"; concerning whom it is necessary to say a little beforehand, since the Romans declare him to have been the chief cause of the overthrow of the tyrants — who he was and from whom and why he obtained this surname which in no way belonged to him.

68.1. This man's father was Marcus Junius, a descendant of one of those who set out with Aeneas on the colony, numbered among the most distinguished of the Romans for valour; and his mother was Tarquinia, the daughter of the former king Tarquinius; and he himself shared in all the nurture and education of the country, and had a nature opposing nothing of the noble things.

68.2. But when Tarquinius, having killed Tullius along with many other good men, made away also with his father by a secret death, for no wrong, but led on to a desire for the wealth which he possessed from an ancient and ancestral prosperity, and with him his elder brother, who showed a noble spirit and would not have endured not to avenge his father's death — Brutus, being still young and utterly bereft of kindred help, undertook to do a thing most prudent of all, to falsely feign upon himself an assumed folly; and he continued all the time thereafter, until he thought he had the suitable occasion, keeping up the pretence of madness, from which he obtained this surname; and this saved him from suffering any terrible thing at the hands of the tyrant, while many good men were destroyed.

69.1. For Tarquinius, despising the folly which seemed to be about him but was not in truth, took away all his ancestral property, supplying him a little for his daily living, and, as an orphan child still needing guardians, kept him under himself and permitted him to live with his own sons — not through honour, as he pretended to those near him, as being a kinsman, but that he might furnish laughter to the youths, saying many foolish things and doing things like those who are truly foolish.

69.2. And indeed, when he sent two of his sons, Arruns and Titus, to consult the Delphic oracle concerning the plague — for a certain unaccustomed disease fell, in his reign, upon maidens and children, by which many bodies were destroyed, but most grievous and hard to cure for pregnant women, killing the mothers along with their infants in the birth — wishing to learn from the god both the cause of the disease and the remedy, he sent him too along with the youths, who begged it, that they might have one to mock and outrage.

69.3. When the young men had come to the oracle and received the responses concerning the things for which they were sent, having honoured the god with offerings and laughed much at Brutus, because he dedicated a wooden staff to Apollo — but he had bored it through entirely like a flute and put in a golden rod, no one knowing — after this they asked the god to whom it was fated to receive the rule of the Romans; and the god answered them, "To him who first kisses his mother."

69.4. The young men, then, ignorant of the meaning of the oracle, agreed with one another to kiss their mother at the same time, wishing to hold the kingship in common; but Brutus, understanding what the god meant to make plain, as soon as he set foot on Italy, stooping down kissed the earth, thinking this to be the mother of all men. Such, then, were the things that had befallen this man before.

70.1. At that time, when he heard Valerius relating the things that had befallen Lucretia and her death, raising his hands to heaven he said: "O Zeus and all you gods who watch over the life of men, has that moment now come for which I, waiting, kept up this pretence of life? Is it fated for the Romans to be delivered, by me and through me, from this unbearable tyranny?"

70.2. Having said this, he went in haste to the house together with Collatinus and Valerius. And when he entered, Collatinus, seeing Lucretia lying in the midst and her father lying about her, with a great groan and embracing the dead, kissed her and called upon her and conversed with her as with the living, being out of his mind through

70.3. the calamity. While he was lamenting much, and the father in turn, and the whole house was possessed with weeping and wailing, Brutus, looking at them, said: "You will have ten thousand occasions, Lucretius and Collatinus and all you who are kin to the woman, in which you may weep for her; but now let us consider how we shall avenge her;

70.4. for this the present occasion demands." It seemed he spoke reasonably, and, seating themselves apart and removing out of the way the throng of household servants and hired labourers, they took counsel what they ought to do. First Brutus, beginning to speak about himself — that the folly which seemed to the many to be his was not true but assumed, and telling the reasons for which he had endured this pretence — and being thought the most prudent of all men, after this persuaded them all, taking the same resolve, to drive Tarquinius and his sons from the city, delivering many alluring words to this end. And when he saw all of one mind, he said there was need not of words nor of promises, but of deeds, if any of the things needful were to come to pass; and he said that he himself would lead in these.

70.5. Having said this and taking the dagger with which the woman had killed herself, and going to her body — for it still lay in the open, a most piteous spectacle — he swore by Mars and the other gods to do all that he could for the overthrow of the rule of the Tarquinii, and neither himself to be reconciled to the tyrants nor to permit those who were reconciled, but to hold as an enemy the one who did not wish the same things, and even to the death to be the enemy of the tyranny and those who fought along with it. And if he should transgress the oath, he prayed that such an end of life might befall both him and his children as had befallen the woman.

71.1. Having said this, he called all the others too to the same oath; and they, no longer hesitating, rose up and, receiving the sword from one another, swore. The oaths having been taken, after this they immediately sought what should be the manner of the attempt. And Brutus suggests to them the following: "First, let us keep the gates under guard, that Tarquinius may perceive nothing of what is being said and done in the city against the tyranny, before the things on our side are made

71.2. ready. Then, bringing the body of the woman as it is, defiled with blood, into the Forum and setting it forth in the open, let us summon the people into an assembly. And when they have assembled and we see the Forum full, let Lucretius and Collatinus come forward and lament their own fortunes, relating all that has happened.

71.3. Then let each of the others, coming forward, accuse the tyranny and call the citizens to freedom. And it will be according to the prayer of all the Romans, if they see us, the patricians, beginning the work of freedom; for they have suffered many terrible things from the tyrant and need but a small impulse. And when we have got the multitude eager to overthrow the monarchy, let us give them a vote that Tarquinius shall no longer rule the Romans, and let us send the decree about these matters to those at the camp with speed.

71.4. For those bearing arms too, if they learn that all in the city is hostile to the tyrants, will become eager for the freedom of their country, being no longer held by gifts as before nor able to bear the outrages of the sons and flatterers of Tarquinius."

71.5. When he had said this, Valerius, taking up the speech, said: "In other respects, Junius, you seem to me to reckon rightly; but concerning the assembly I still wish to learn who shall be the one to summon it according to the laws and to give the vote to the curiae. For this is assigned to a magistrate to do; and none of us holds any magistracy." And he, taking him up, said: "I, Valerius;

71.6. for I am commander of the Celeres, and it is assigned to me by the laws to summon an assembly whenever I wish. The tyrant gave me this office, the greatest there is, as to a fool who would neither know its power nor, if I should know, would use it; and I will be the first to deliver the speech against the tyrant."

72.1. When all heard this, they praised him and asked him to say the rest, as having begun from a fine and lawful premise. And he said: "Since it seems good to you to do these things thus, let us consider again what magistracy shall be the one to govern the city after the overthrow of the kings, and by what man it shall be appointed; and, before this, what shall be the order of the constitution which, on ridding ourselves of the tyrant, we shall establish. For it is better to have deliberated everything before attempting so great a deed, and to leave nothing unexamined or unplanned. Let each of you, then,

72.2. declare what he thinks about these matters." After this many speeches were made by many. To some it seemed best to establish again a royal constitution, reckoning up all the goods which all the former kings had done the city; to others, no longer to entrust public affairs to one ruler, recounting the tyrannical lawlessnesses which many others had used against their own citizens, and Tarquinius at the last, but to make the council of the senate master of all, as in many of the Greek cities;

72.3. and others preferred neither of these constitutions, but counselled to establish a democracy as at Athens, alleging the outrages and greeds of the few and the dissensions that arise of the lowly toward the eminent, and declaring equality before the law to be, for a free city, the safest and most fitting of constitutions.

73.1. The choice appearing to all difficult and hard to decide, on account of the evils attending each of the constitutions, last of all Brutus, taking up the speech, said: "I, Lucretius and Collatinus and all you present, good men and of good fathers, think we ought to establish no new constitution for the present; for the moment to which we have been brought by circumstances is brief, in which to reorder the constitution of a city is not easy; and the trial of the change, even if we chance to deliberate best concerning it, is perilous and not without danger. And it will be possible for us later, when we are rid of the tyranny, with more authority and at leisure to choose the better constitution instead of the worse, if indeed there be any better than that which Romulus and Pompilius and all the kings after them established and handed down to us, from which our city has continued great and prosperous and ruling over many men.

73.2. But the grievous things which are wont to attend monarchies, from which they pass over into tyrannical cruelty and on account of which all men dislike them, these I advise you to correct now, and to guard against, that they may not ever arise even hereafter.

73.3. And what are these? First, since the many look to the names of things, and from these either accept some of the harmful or shun some of the useful — among which monarchy too happens to be — I advise you to change the name of the constitution and no longer to call those who are to have the authority over all kings or monarchs, but to give them some more moderate and more humane appellation.

73.4. Then not to make the single opinion of all masters, but to entrust the royal rule to two men, as I learn the Lacedaemonians do for many generations now, and on account of this form of government to be the best-governed and most prosperous of all the Greeks; for they will be less insolent and oppressive, the authority being divided in two and each having the same strength; and mutual respect, and prevention of living according to pleasure, and emulation toward the reputation of virtue, would most arise for each from this rule of equal honour.

74.1. And of the insignia which have been assigned to the kings, being many, if any present grievous and envied sights to the many, some I think we ought to diminish, others to take away — I mean these sceptres and the golden crowns and the purple and gold-bordered robes, except at certain festival seasons and in the processions of triumphs, when they shall take them up for the honour of the gods; for it will grieve no one, if they be rare. But for the men an ivory chair, sitting on which they shall give judgment, and a white robe with a purple border, and the twelve axes preceding them in their goings-forth, we should leave.

74.2. Besides these, what I think will be the most useful of all that has been said and the chief cause of those who take over the rule not erring much: not to allow the same men to rule for life; for an undefined rule, giving no account of what is done, is grievous to all, and from it tyranny grows; but to confine the power of the office to a year's term, as is done among the Athenians.

74.3. For the same man ruling and being ruled in turn, and laying down the authority before his mind is corrupted, restrains self-willed natures and does not let characters become drunk with power. If we establish these things, it will be possible for us both to reap the goods of the royal constitution and to be rid of the evils attending it.

74.4. And that the name of the royal authority, being ancestral to us and having come into the city with auspicious omens, the gods ratifying it, may be preserved for the sake of religion, let there always be appointed a king of the sacred rites, who shall hold this honour for life, released from all warlike and political occupation, having this one work alone, like the king, the leadership of the sacrifices, and nothing else.

75.1. In what manner each of these things shall be, hear from me. I will summon the assembly, as I said, since it is permitted me by law, and I will introduce a motion: that Tarquinius, together with his sons and his wife, be banished, debarred from the city and territory of the Romans for all time, and the offspring sprung from them. And when the citizens have voted the motion, declaring to them the constitution we intend to establish, I will choose an interrex who shall appoint those who are to take over public affairs; and I myself will lay down the office of the Celeres.

75.2. And the interrex appointed by me, convening the centuriate assembly, shall name those who are to hold the annual leadership and shall give the citizens a vote concerning them. And if it seems good to the majority of the centuries that the choice of the men be valid, and the auspices concerning them be fair, these men, taking over the axes and the rest of the symbols of royal authority, shall act so that we may dwell with a free country and that the Tarquinii may no longer have a return to it; for they will attempt, know it well, by persuasion and force and guile and every other means, to come back again to the rule, unless we guard against them.

75.3. These, then, are the greatest and most important of the things I have to say and advise you at present; but the particulars, being many and not easy now to examine with precision — for we have been gathered for a sharp moment — I think we ought to leave to the very men who shall take over the rule.

75.4. I say, however, that the men ought to consider everything with the council of the senate, as the kings did, and to do nothing apart from you, and to bring the resolutions of the senate to the people, as it was the custom of our ancestors to do, taking from it none of the things of which it was master in former times. For thus will their rule be most secure and most honourable."

76.1. When Junius Brutus had declared this opinion, all praised it, and at once, deliberating about the men who should take over the leadership, they judged that Spurius Lucretius, the father of her who had killed herself, should be appointed interrex; and that by him those who should have the authority of the kings should be named, Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus.

76.2. These magistrates they ordained should be called in their own tongue consuls; this name, interpreted into the Greek tongue, can mean "counsellors" or "foredeliberators," for the Romans call counsels consilia; but in course of time they were named by the Greeks hypatoi ("supreme"), from the greatness of their authority, because they rule over all and hold the highest place. For the ancients called the surpassing and

76.3. highest hypaton. Having deliberated and established these things, and having besought the gods with prayers to aid them as they reached after holy and just deeds, they went out into the Forum. And there followed them the servants carrying upon a bier spread with black coverings the corpse, untended and defiled with blood; and ordering it to be set before the senate-house, lofty and conspicuous, they summoned the people into an assembly.

76.4. When a crowd had gathered, not only of that then in the Forum but also of that throughout the whole city — for the heralds went through the lanes summoning the people to the Forum — Brutus, mounting the place where it was the custom for those summoning the assemblies to harangue, and stationing the patricians beside him, spoke as follows.

77.1. "Being about to make speeches to you, fellow citizens, concerning necessary and common affairs, I wish first to say a few things beforehand about myself. For to some of you, or rather, I know well, to many, I shall seem disturbed in mind, a man not in his right senses attempting to speak about the greatest things, who, being unsound, has need of guardians.

77.2. Know, then, that the common supposition which you all had about me as a fool was false and was contrived by no other but myself. And what compelled me to live neither as nature thought fit nor as befitted me, but as it was Tarquinius's wish and seemed likely to profit me, was fear for my life.

77.3. For Tarquinius, having killed my father at the same time as he took over the rule, that he might seize his property, which was very great, and having made away by a secret death with my elder brother, who would have avenged his father's death if he were not put out of the way, was not plainly going to spare me either, left bereft of my nearest kin, had I not feigned the assumed folly.

77.4. This fiction, being believed by the tyrant, saved me from suffering the same things as they, and has preserved me to the present time; but now for the first time — for the moment has come which I prayed for and awaited — having kept it for this five-and-twentieth year, I lay it aside. So much concerning myself.

78.1. The common affairs, for which I summoned you into the assembly, are these. Tarquinius — who got the rule neither according to our ancestral customs and laws, nor, since he got it, however he got it, used it well and in kingly fashion, but has surpassed in outrage and lawlessness all the tyrants that ever existed anywhere — him we, the patricians, meeting together, have resolved to deprive of his authority, a thing that ought to have been done long ago, but which we now do at a fitting moment; and we have summoned you, plebeians, that, declaring our own purpose, we may ask you to become our fellow combatants in working freedom for our country — freedom which neither was it possible for us to share before, ever since Tarquinius held the rule, nor will it be possible hereafter, if we now grow soft.

78.2. If, then, I had as much time as I wished, or were about to speak to men ignorant, I would recount all the lawlessnesses of the tyrant, for which he would justly deserve to perish, not once, but many times, in the eyes of all; but since the moment that circumstances give me is brief, in which there is need to say little but to do much, and the words are addressed to men who know, I will remind you of the greatest and most manifest of his deeds, those that can obtain no defence whatever.

79.1. This is, fellow citizens, that Tarquinius who, before taking over the rule, made away by poison with Arruns his legitimate brother, because he was unwilling to be wicked, having taken as helper in this abomination that brother's wife, the sister of his own consort, whom this enemy of the gods had long been corrupting;

79.2. this is the man who, in the same days and by the same poisons, killed his wedded wife, a modest woman who had become a partner of children with him; and who did not even think fit to clear himself of the calumnies of both poisonings, as though they had not been done by himself, by using a piteous guise and a small pretence of mourning, but, immediately upon doing these marvellous deeds, before the pyres that received the wretched bodies had died down, feasted his friends and celebrated nuptials and led the murderess bride to the chamber of her sister, confirming with her his secret agreements — being the first and only to introduce into the city of the Romans impious and accursed deeds done nowhere in the land of Greek or

79.3. barbarian. And what things, plebeians, did he work — the notorious and terrible attempts upon both his fathers-in-law, who were already at the setting of their life? Servius Tullius, the most equitable of kings and the one who did you the most good, he openly slaughtered and did not permit his body to obtain a proper carrying-out or burial;

79.4. and Tarquinia, that man's wife, whom it befitted him to honour as a mother, being his father's sister and zealous on his behalf, before she had mourned and done the customary rites for her husband who was beneath the earth, the wretched woman he made away with by the noose — those by whom he was saved and among whom he was reared and whom he was about to succeed after their death, had he waited a little, until the natural death came to them.

80.1. But why do I find fault with these things, having so many of his lawlessnesses to accuse, apart from those done to his kinsmen and fathers-in-law — those accomplished against the country and all of us, if indeed one must call them lawlessnesses and not overthrows and abolitions of all the customs and usages? To begin with the leadership, that I may start from this, how did he take it over? Was it as the kings before him? Whence?

80.2. Far from it. Those, indeed, were all brought to power by you according to ancestral customs and laws: first, a decree being written by the senate, to which is assigned the preliminary deliberation about all public matters; then interreges being chosen, to whom the council entrusts to decide, from those worthy of the rule, the most fit; after this, the people casting a vote in the elections, with which the law wishes all the greatest matters to be ratified; and upon all these, the auspices and victims and the other signs being favourable, without which there would be no benefit of human zeal and forethought.

80.3. Come, then, which of these does any of you know to have occurred when Tarquinius took the rule? What preliminary decree of the council? What decision of interreges? What voting of the people? What favourable auspices? I do not say, though I ought, that, if indeed it was to be well, none of the customary things according to the laws should have been omitted; but if anyone can show even one only of these to have occurred, I do not think fit to slander those omitted. How, then, did he come to power? By arms and force and conspiracies of wicked men, as is the custom of tyrants, against your will and to your displeasure.

80.4. Come, then — but since he held the rule, however he got it, has he used it in kingly fashion, emulating the former rulers, who continued saying and doing such things as made the city more prosperous and greater for those who came after than they received it? And who, being of sound mind, would say this, seeing how piteously and badly we have all been treated by him?

81.1. Our own calamities, then — those of the patricians — at which even one of our enemies, learning them, would weep, I pass over in silence: that few of many are we left, that from great we have become lowly, that we have come to poverty and terrible want, having fallen from many blessed goods. Those brilliant and powerful and great men, through whom our city was once illustrious, some have perished,

81.2. others are exiles from their country. But your affairs, plebeians, how stand they? Has he not taken from you your laws, taken from you your gatherings for sacred rites and sacrifices, stopped those who held elections and voted and assembled about public matters, and compelled you to toil at things deserving shame, like bought slaves — quarrying, cutting timber, bearing burdens, consumed in pits and abysses, getting not the smallest respite from your evils?

81.3. What, then, will be the limit of our calamities, and for how long a time, suffering these things, shall we endure, and when shall we recover our ancestral freedom? When Tarquinius dies? By Zeus! And what more shall we have then — what not worse? For we shall have three Tarquinii instead of one,

81.4. far more polluted than the father. For where the one who became a tyrant from a private man, and late began to be wicked, perfects all tyrannical wickedness, of what sort must we think those sprung from him will be, whose race is wicked, whose nurture wicked, and who never had occasion either to see or to learn anything political and moderate being done? And that you may not conjecture their accursed natures but learn them exactly — what kind of whelps the tyranny of Tarquinius rears up for you — behold the deed of one of them, the eldest.

82.1. This is the daughter of Spurius Lucretius, whom the tyrant appointed prefect of the city when he went out to the war, and the wife of Tarquinius Collatinus, the kinsman of the tyrants and one who suffered much hardship on their behalf. This woman, wishing to be chaste and loving her own husband, as befits a good wife, when Sextus was lodged with her on account of the kinship the past night, Collatinus being then absent at the camp, was unable to escape the licentious outrage of the tyranny, but, like a captive overpowered by necessity, endured to suffer what is not lawful for a free woman to suffer.

82.2. Indignant at this and deeming the outrage unbearable, when she had recounted to her father and the other kinsmen the constraints that seized her, having made many entreaties and curses that they should become avengers of her evils, and having drawn the sword hidden beneath her bosom, before her father's eyes, plebeians, she dyed the iron through her own entrails.

82.3. O wondrous woman, and worthy of many praises for your noble resolve — you are gone and perished, not having endured tyrannical outrage, disdaining all the pleasures in living, that no such thing might befall you to suffer again. Then you, Lucretia, having got a woman's nature, had the spirit of a noble man; but shall we, being men, prove worse than women in virtue? And to you, because you were tyrannized over for a single night and robbed by force of your unstained honour, death seemed sweeter and more blessed than life; but shall not this same thought come to us, from whom Tarquinius, tyrannizing now not one day but the five-and-twentieth year, has taken away all the pleasures in living, having taken away freedom?

82.4. It is not, plebeians, to be endured by us, wallowing in such evils, being the descendants of those men who thought fit to ordain justice for others and undertook many dangers for rule and glory; but one of two things must be chosen by all, either a free life or a glorious death.

82.5. And the moment has come, such as we pray for: Tarquinius having departed from the city, the patricians leading the attempt, and nothing being lacking to us, if with zeal we proceed to the work — neither men, nor money, nor arms, nor generals, nor the rest of the equipment for war; for the city is full of all these. And it is shameful to think fit to rule the Volscians and the Sabines and ten thousand others, but ourselves to endure being slaves to others; and concerning the greed of Tarquinius to take up many wars, but concerning our own freedom, none.

83.1. By what resources, then, shall we proceed to the work, and by what alliances? For this remains to be said. First, by the hopes from the gods, whose sacred rites and precincts and altars Tarquinius pollutes with his blood-stained hands, full of every kindred abomination, when he begins sacrifices and libations; then by those from ourselves, who are neither few nor inexperienced in war; and besides these, by the aid from the allies, who, if we do not call them, will not think fit to meddle, but, if they see us laying claim to virtue, will gladly join in the war; for tyranny is hateful to all who wish to be free.

83.2. But if any of you fear the citizens at the camp with Tarquinius, as ones who will fight along with him and make war on us, they fear wrongly. For to them too the tyranny is grievous, and innate in all men is the longing for freedom, and every pretext for change is sufficient for those who toil by necessity; whom, if you shall vote to aid the country, neither fear will hold among the tyrants, nor favour, nor any other of the things that force or persuade men to do what is

83.3. not just. And if in any of them, through evil nature or wicked nurture, the love of tyranny is innate — not many, by Zeus — these too we will yoke with great necessities, so as to become from wicked, good; for we have as hostages in the city their children and wives and parents, which are more precious to each than his own life. These things, then, we will promise to restore to them, if they desert the tyrants, and, voting them immunity for what they have erred, we shall easily persuade them.

83.4. Therefore, with confidence, plebeians, and having good hopes for the future, go to the contest, about to undertake the fairest of all the wars you have ever loved. We, then — O ancestral gods, good guardians of this land, and divinities who have been allotted our fathers, and city most beloved of gods among cities, in which we obtained our birth and nurture — will defend you with counsels and words and hands and lives, and are ready to suffer all, whatever the divine power and necessity may bring.

83.5. And I divine that upon fair attempts a fortunate end will follow. May it be that all, taking the same courage and using one mind, both save us and be saved by us."

84.1. While Brutus was thus haranguing, continuous shouts at each of his statements arose from the multitude, signifying their will and their encouragement, and to most of them tears of pleasure flowed as they heard the marvellous and unexpected words; and various emotions, in no way like one another, seized the soul of each: griefs were mingled with pleasures, the former at the terrible things that had gone before, the latter at the goods expected; and angers fell out along with fears, the angers urging them to disdain safety for the working of evil upon the things they hated, the fears, by the reckoning that the overthrow of the tyranny would not be easy, bringing hesitation to their resolves.

84.2. When he ceased speaking, as if from one mouth all cried out the same cry, to lead them to arms. And Brutus, pleased, said: "Provided that you first, having learned the resolutions of the council, ratify what has been decreed. For it has been decreed by us that the Tarquinii be banished from the city of the Romans and from all the country over which the Romans rule, and all the race sprung from them; and that it be lawful for no one either to do or to say anything about the return of the Tarquinii; and if anyone be found acting contrary to this, that he die.

84.3. If it is your wish that this resolution be valid, dividing yourselves by curiae, cast your vote, and let this be the first beginning of the right of freedom for you." This was done; and when all the curiae had voted the banishment of the tyrants, Brutus, coming forward again, said: "Since the first things have been ratified by us as was needful, hear also the rest

84.4. of what we have deliberated concerning the constitution. To us, considering what magistracy shall be master of public affairs, it no longer seems good to establish a kingship, but to appoint two magistrates each year, who shall have royal authority, whom you shall appoint in the elections by casting your vote according to centuries. If, then, this too is your wish, ratify it by your vote." The people praised this opinion too, and there was no vote against it.

84.5. After this Brutus, coming forward, appoints as interrex, to take charge of the elections according to the ancestral laws, Spurius Lucretius; and he, dismissing the assembly, ordered all to come to the plain where it was their custom to hold the elections, bearing their arms, with speed. When they had come, he chooses two men to do all that the kings were permitted to do, Brutus and Collatinus; and the people, called by centuries, ratified the rule for the men. Such, then, were the things done in the city at that time.

85.1. King Tarquinius, when he heard from the messengers from the city — who were the first to escape before the gates were shut, reporting only this much, that Brutus held the assembly, demagoguing and calling the citizens to freedom — telling none of the others, hastened, taking up his sons and the most trustworthy of his companions, driving his horses at full rein, to forestall the revolt. But finding the gates shut and the battlements full of arms, he went off again to the camp as fast as he could, groaning and grievously suffering.

85.2. But it chanced that affairs there too were already ruined. For the consuls, foreseeing his swift arrival at the city, send letters by other roads to those at the camp, calling on them to revolt from the tyrant and making plain the resolutions of those in the town.

85.3. These letters the prefects left by the king, Titus Herminius and Marcus Horatius, having received, read in the assembly; and asking opinions according to centuries what they ought to do, since it seemed good to all to hold valid the things judged by the city, they no longer received Tarquinius when he arrived.

85.4. Thrust away from this hope too, the king flees with a few to the city of the Gabini, of which he had appointed king the elder of his sons, Sextus, as I said before — being now grey in age, but having held the kingship twenty-five years. And Herminius and Horatius, having established a truce of the war with the Ardeates for fifteen years, led off the forces homeward. The royal constitution, then, having lasted, after the founding of Rome, two hundred and forty-four years in number, and having, under the last king, become a tyranny, was, for these causes and by these men, dissolved.