The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08
in the chief men of the state. For the knights were first called, and
then the eighty centuries of the first class; and if they happened to
differ, which was seldom the case, those of the second were called: and
they seldom ever descended so low as to come to the lowest class. Nor
need we be surprised, that the present regulation, which now exists,
since the tribes were increased to thirty-five, should not agree in the
number of centuries of juniors and seniors with the amount instituted by
Servius Tullius, they being now double of what they were at that time.
For the city being divided into four parts, according to the regions and
hills which were then inhabited, he called these divisions tribes, as I
think, from the tribute.[55] For the method of levying taxes rateably
according to the value of estates was also introduced by him; nor had
these tribes any relation to the number and distribution of the
centuries.
[Footnote 55: Varro, de L.L. iv. 36, thinks, on the contrary, that
_tributum_ was so called, as being paid by the _tribes_.]
44. The census being now completed, which he had expedited by the terror
of a law passed on those not rated, with threats of imprisonment and
death, he issued a proclamation that all the Roman citizens, horse and
foot, should attend at the dawn of day in the Campus Martius, each in
his century. There he drew up his army and performed a lustration of it
by the sacrifices called suovetaurilia, and that was called the closing
of the lustrum, because that was the conclusion of the census. Eighty
thousand citizens are said to have been rated in that survey. Fabius
Pictor, the oldest of our historians, adds, that such was the number of
those who were able to bear arms. To accommodate that number the city
seemed to require enlargement. He adds two hills, the Quirinal and
Viminal; then in continuation he enlarges the Esquiliæ, and takes up his
own residence there, in order that respectability might attach to the
place. He surrounds the city with a rampart, a moat, and a wall: thus he
enlarges the pomœrium. They who regard only the etymology of the
word, will have the pomœrium to be a space of ground without the
walls; but it is rather a space on each side the wall, which the
Etrurians in building cities consecrated by augury, reaching to a
certain extent both within and without in the direction they intended to
raise the wall; so that the houses might not be joined to it on the
inside, as they commonly are now, and also that there might be some
space without left free from human occupation. This space, which it was
not lawful to till or inhabit, the Romans called the pomœrium, not
for its being without the wall, more than for the wall's being without
it: and in enlarging the city, as far as the walls were intended to
proceed outwards, so far these consecrated limits were likewise
extended.
45. The state being increased by the enlargement of the city, and every
thing modelled at home and abroad for the exigencies both of peace and
war, that the acquisition of power might not always depend on mere force
of arms, he endeavoured to extend his empire by policy, and at the same
time to add some ornament to the city. [56]The temple of Diana at
Ephesus was at that time in high renown; fame represented it to have
been built by all the states of Asia, in common. When Servius, amid some
grandees of the Latins with whom he had taken pains to form connexions
of hospitality and friendship, extolled in high terms such concord and
association of their gods, by frequently insisting on the same subject,
he at length prevailed so far as that the Latin states agreed to build a
temple to Diana at Rome, in conjunction with the Roman people. This was
an acknowledgment that Rome was the head of both nations, concerning
which they had so often disputed in arms. Though that object seemed to
have been left out of consideration by all the Latins, in consequence of
the matter having been so often attempted unsuccessfully by arms,
fortune seemed to present one of the Sabines with an opportunity of
recovering the superiority to his country by his own address. A cow is
said to have been calved to a certain person, the head of a family among
the Sabines, of surprising size and beauty. Her horns, which were hung
up in the porch of the temple of Diana, remained, for many ages, a
monument of this wonder. The thing was looked upon as a prodigy, as it
was, and the soothsayers declared, that sovereignty would reside in that
state of which a citizen should immolate this heifer to Diana. This
prediction had also reached the ears of the high priest of Diana. The
Sabine, when he thought the proper time for offering the sacrifice was
come, drove the cow to Rome, led her to the temple of that goddess, and
set her before the altar. The Roman priest, struck with the uncommon
size of the victim, so much celebrated by fame, thus accosted the
Sabine: "What intendest thou to do, stranger?" says he. "Is it with
impure hands to offer a sacrifice to Diana? Why dost not thou first wash
thyself in running water? The Tiber runs along in the bottom of that
valley." The stranger, being seized with a scruple of conscience, and
desirous of having every thing done in due form, that the event might
answer the prediction, from the temple went down to the Tiber. In the
mean time the priest sacrificed the cow to Diana, which gave great
satisfaction to the king, and to the whole state.
[Footnote 56: _Temple of Diana_. Built on the summit of the Aventine
mount towards the Tiber. On its brazen pillar were engraved the laws of
the treaty, and which were still extant in the time of Augustus.]
46. Servius, though he had now acquired an indisputable right to the
kingdom by long possession, yet as he heard that expressions were
sometimes thrown out by young Tarquin, importing, "That he held the
crown without the consent of the people," having first secured their
good will by dividing among them, man by man, the lands taken from their
enemies, he ventured to propose the question to the people, whether they
"chose and ordered that he should be king," and was declared king with
such unanimity, as had not been observed in the election of any of his
predecessors. But this circumstance diminished not Tarquin's hope of
obtaining the throne; nay, because he had observed that the question of
the distribution of land to the people[57] was carried against the will
of the fathers, he felt so much the more satisfied that an opportunity
was now presented to him of arraigning Servius before the fathers, and
of increasing his own influence in the senate, he being himself
naturally of a fiery temper, and his wife, Tullia, at home stimulating
his restless temper. For the Roman palace also afforded an instance of
tragic guilt, so that through their disgust of kings, liberty might come
more matured, and the throne, which should be attained through crime,
might be the last. This L. Tarquinius (whether he was the son or
grandson of Tarquinius Priscus is not clear; with the greater number of
authorities, however, I would say, his son[58]) had a brother, Aruns
Tarquinius, a youth of a mild disposition. To these two, as has been
already stated, the two Tulliæ, daughters of the king, had been married,
they also being of widely different tempers. It had so happened that the
two violent dispositions were not united in marriage, through the good
fortune, I suspect, of the Roman people, in order that the reign of
Servius might be more protracted, and the morals of the state be firmly
established. The haughty Tullia was chagrined, that there was no
material in her husband, either for ambition or bold daring. Directing
all her regard to the other Tarquinius, him she admired, him she called
a man, and one truly descended of royal blood; she expressed her
contempt of her sister, because, having got a man, she was deficient in
the spirit becoming a woman. Similarity of mind soon draws them
together, as wickedness is in general most congenial to wickedness. But
the commencement of producing general confusion originated with the
woman. She, accustomed to the secret conversations of the other's
husband, refrained not from using the most contumelious language of her
husband to his brother, of her sister to (her sister's) husband, and
contended, that it were better that she herself were unmarried, and he
single, than that they should be matched unsuitably, so that they must
languish away through life by reason of the dastardly conduct of others.
If the gods had granted her the husband of whom she was worthy, that she
should soon see the crown in her own house, which she now saw at her
father's. She soon inspires the young man with her own daring notions.
Aruns Tarquinius and the younger Tullia, when they had, by immediate
successive deaths, made their houses vacant for new nuptials, are united
in marriage, Servius rather not prohibiting than approving the measure.
[Footnote 57: This is noticed as the first trace of the Agrarian
division by Niebuhr, i. p. 161.]
[Footnote 58: _His son_. Dionysius will have it that he was the
grandson. See Nieb. i. p. 367.]
47. Then indeed the old age of Servius began to be every day more
disquieted, his reign to be more unhappy. For now the woman looked from
one crime to another, and suffered not her husband to rest by night or
by day, lest their past murders might go for nothing. "That what she had
wanted was not a person whose wife she might be called, or one with whom
she might in silence live a slave; what she had wanted was one who would
consider himself worthy of the throne; who would remember that he was
the son of Tarquinius Priscus; who would rather possess a kingdom than
hope for it. If you, to whom I consider myself married, are such a one,
I address you both as husband and king; but if not, our condition has
been changed so far for the worse, as in that person crime is associated
with meanness. Why not prepare yourself? It is not necessary for you, as
for your father, (coming here) from Corinth or Tarquinii, to strive for
foreign thrones. Your household and country's gods, the image of your
father, and the royal palace, and the royal throne in that palace,
constitute and call you king. Or if you have too little spirit for this,
why do you disappoint the nation? Why do you suffer yourself to be
looked up to as a prince? Get hence to Tarquinii or Corinth. Sink back
again to your (original) race, more like your brother than your father."
By chiding him in these and other terms, she spurs on the young man; nor
can she herself rest; (indignant) that when Tanaquil, a foreign woman,
could achieve so great a project, as to bestow two successive thrones on
her husband, and then on her son-in-law, she, sprung from royal blood,
should have no weight in bestowing and taking away a kingdom.
Tarquinius, driven on by these frenzied instigations of the woman,
began to go round and solicit the patricians, especially those of the
younger families;[59] reminded them of his father's kindness, and
claimed a return for it; enticed the young men by presents; increased
his interest, as well by making magnificent promises on his own part, as
by inveighing against the king at every opportunity. At length, as soon
as the time seemed convenient for accomplishing his object, he rushed
into the forum, accompanied by a party of armed men; then, whilst all
were struck with dismay, seating himself on the throne before the
senate-house, he ordered the fathers to be summoned to the senate-house
by the crier to attend king Tarquinius. They assembled immediately, some
being already prepared for the occasion, some through fear, lest their
not having come might prove detrimental to them, astounded at the