The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08
and the gods who avenge parents were invoked by him. By stating these
and other, I suppose, more exasperating circumstances, which though by
no means easily detailed by writers, the heinousness of the case
suggested at the time, he persuaded the multitude, already incensed, to
deprive the king of his authority, and to order the banishment of L.
Tarquin with his wife and children. He himself, having selected and
armed some of the young men, who readily gave in their names, set out
for Ardea to the camp to excite the army against the king: the command
in the city he leaves to Lucretius, who had been already appointed
prefect of the city by the king. During this tumult Tullia fled from her
house, both men and women cursing her wherever she went, and invoking on
her the furies the avengers of parents.
60. News of these transactions having reached the camp, when the king,
alarmed at this sudden revolution, was going to Rome to quell the
commotions, Brutus, for he had notice of his approach, turned out of the
way, that he might not meet him; and much about the same time Brutus and
Tarquin arrived by different routes, the one at Ardea, the other at
Rome. The gates were shut against Tarquin, and an act of banishment
passed against him; the deliverer of the state the camp received with
great joy, and the king's sons were expelled. Two of them followed their
father, and went into banishment to Cære, a city of Etruria. Sextus
Tarquin, having gone to Gabii, as to his own kingdom, was slain by the
avengers of the old feuds, which he had raised against himself by his
rapines and murders. Lucius Tarquin the Proud reigned twenty-five years:
the regal form of government continued from the building of the city to
this period of its deliverance, two hundred and forty-four years. Two
consuls, viz. Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus,
were elected by the prefect of the city at the comitia by centuries,
according to the commentaries of Servius Tullius.
BOOK II.
_Brutus binds the people by oath, never to suffer any king to reign
at Rome, obliges Tarquinius Collatinus, his colleague, to resign
the consulship, and leave the state; beheads some young noblemen,
and among the rest his own and his sister's sons, for a conspiracy
to receive the kings into the city. In a war against the Veientians
and Tarquiniensians, he engages in single combat with Aruns the son
of Tarquin the Proud, and expires at the same time with his
adversary. The ladies mourn for him a whole year. The Capitol
dedicated. Porsena, king of Clusium, undertakes a war in favour of
the Tarquins. Bravery of Horatius Cocles, and of Mucius. Porsena
concludes a peace on the receipt of hostages. Conduct of Clœlia.
Ap. Claudius removes from the country of the Sabines to Rome: for
this reason the Claudian tribe is added to the former number, which
by this means are increased to twenty-one. A. Posthumius the
dictator defeats at the lake Regillus Tarquin the Proud, making war
upon the Romans with an army of Latins. Secession of the commons to
the Sacred Mount; brought back by Menenius Agrippa. Five tribunes
of the people created. Corioli taken by C. Martius; from that he is
surnamed Coriolanus. Banishment and subsequent conduct of C. M.
Coriolanus. The Agrarian law first made. Sp. Cassius condemned and
put to death. Oppia, a vestal virgin, buried alive for
incontinence. The Fabian family undertake to carry on that war at
their own cost and hazard, against the Veientians, and for that
purpose send out three hundred and six men in arms, who were all
cut off. Ap. Claudius the consul decimates his army because he had
been unsuccessful in the war with the Veientians, by their refusing
to obey orders. An account of the wars with the Volscians, Æquians,
and Veientians, and the contests of the fathers with the commons._
1. The affairs, civil and military, of the Roman people, henceforward
free, their annual magistrates, and the sovereignty of the laws, more
powerful than that of men, I shall now detail.--The haughty insolence of
the late king had caused this liberty to be the more welcome: for the
former kings reigned in such a manner that they all in succession might
be not undeservedly set down as founders of the parts, at least of the
city, which they added as new residences for the population augmented by
themselves. Nor is there a doubt but that the very same Brutus who
earned so much glory for expelling this haughty monarch, would have done
so to the greatest injury of the public weal, if, through an over-hasty
desire of liberty, he had wrested the kingdom from any of the preceding
kings. For what would have been the consequence if that rabble of
shepherds and strangers, fugitives from their own countries, having,
under the protection of an inviolable asylum, found liberty, or at least
impunity, uncontrolled by the dread of regal authority, had begun to be
distracted by tribunician storms, and to engage in contests with the
fathers in a strange city, before the pledges of wives and children, and
love of the very soil, to which it requires a length of time to become
habituated, had united their affections. Their affairs not yet matured
would have been destroyed by discord, which the tranquil moderation of
the government so cherished, and by proper nourishment brought to such
perfection, that, their strength being now developed, they were able to
produce the wholesome fruits of liberty. But the origin of liberty you
may date from this period, rather because the consular authority was
made annual, than that any diminution was made from the kingly
prerogative. The first consuls had all their privileges and ensigns of
authority, only care was taken that the terror might not appear doubled,
by both having the fasces at the same time. Brutus was, with the consent
of his colleague, first attended by the fasces, who had not been a more
zealous assertor of liberty than he was afterwards its guardian. First
of all he bound over the people, whilst still enraptured with their
newly-acquired liberty, by an oath that they would suffer no one to be
king in Rome, lest afterwards they might be perverted by the
importunities or bribes of the royal family. Next in order, that the
fulness of the house might produce more of strength in the senate, he
filled up the number of the senators, diminished by the king's murders,
to the amount of three hundred, having elected the principal men of the
equestrian rank; and from thence it is said the custom was derived of
summoning into the senate both those who were patres and those who were
conscripti.[65] Forsooth they styled those who were elected into the new
senate Conscripti. It is wonderful how much that contributed to the
concord of the state, and to attach the affection of the commons to the
patricians.
[Footnote 65: All were called _Patres conscripti_. Scil. Patres et
Conscripti, the conjunction being omitted. Nieb. i. p. 517.]
2. Then attention was paid to religious matters, and as some part of the
public worship had been performed by the kings in person, that they
might not be missed in any respect, they elect a king of the sacrifices.
This office they made subject to the pontiff, that honour being added to
the name might be no infringement on their liberty, which was now their
principal care. And I know not whether by fencing it on every side to
excess, even in the most trivial matters, they may not have exceeded
bounds. For when there was nothing else to offend, the name of one of
the consuls became an object of dislike to the state. "That the
Tarquinii had been too much habituated to sovereignty; Priscus first
commenced; that Servius Tullus reigned next; that though an interval
thus intervened, that Tarquinius Superbus, not losing sight of the
kingdom as the property of another, had reclaimed it by crime and
violence, as the hereditary right of his family. That Superbus being
expelled, the government was in the hands of Collatinus: that the
Tarquinii knew not how to live in a private station; the name pleased
them not; that it was dangerous to liberty."--Such discourses were at
first gradually circulated through the entire state by persons sounding
their dispositions; and the people, now excited by jealousy, Brutus
convenes to a meeting. There first of all he recites the people's oath:
"that they would suffer no one to be king, nor any thing to be in Rome
whence danger might result to liberty. That it ought to be maintained
with all their might, and nothing that could tend that way ought to be
overlooked; he said it with reluctance, for the sake of the individual;
and would not say it, did not his affection for the commonwealth
predominate; that the people of Rome do not believe that entire liberty
has been recovered; that the regal family, the regal name, was not only
in the state but even in the government; that was unfavourable, that was
injurious to liberty. Do you, L. Tarquinius," says he, "do you, of your
own accord, remove this apprehension. We remember, we own it, you
expelled the royal family; complete your kindness; take hence the royal
name--your property your fellow citizens shall not only restore you, by
my advice, but if any thing is wanting they will generously supply.
Depart in amity. Relieve the state from a dread which is perhaps
groundless. So firmly are they persuaded in mind that only with the
Tarquinian race will kingly power depart hence." Amazement at so
extraordinary and sudden an occurrence at first impeded the consul's
utterance; then, when he was commencing to speak, the chief men of the
state stand around him, and by many importunities urge the same request.
Others indeed had less weight with him. After Sp. Lucretius, superior in
age and rank, his father-in-law besides, began to try various methods,
by entreating and advising alternately, that he would suffer himself to
be prevailed on by the general feeling of the state, the consul,
apprehending lest hereafter these same things might befall him, when
again in a private station, together with loss of property and other
additional disgrace, he resigned his consulship; and removing all his
effects to Lavinium, he withdrew from the state.[66] Brutus, according
to a decree of the senate, proposed to the people, that all the family
of the Tarquins should be banished from Rome; and in an assembly by
centuries he elected P. Valerius, with whose assistance he had expelled
the kings for his colleague.
[Footnote 66: Collatinus is supposed to have earned the odium of the
people, and his consequent expulsion from Rome, by his endeavours to
save his nephews, the Aquillii, from punishment.]
3. Though nobody doubted that a war was impending from the Tarquins, yet
it broke out later than was universally expected; but liberty was well
nigh lost by treachery and fraud, a thing they had never apprehended.
There were, among the Roman youth, several young men of no mean
families, who, during the regal government, had pursued their pleasures
without any restraint; being of the same age with, and companions of,
the young Tarquins, and accustomed to live in princely style. Longing
for that licentiousness, now that the privileges of all were equalized,
they complained that the liberty of others has been converted to their
slavery: "that a king was a human being, from whom you can obtain, where
right, or where wrong may be necessary; that there was room for favour
and for kindness; that he could be angry, and could forgive; that he
knew the difference between a friend and an enemy; that laws were a
deaf, inexorable thing, more beneficial and advantageous for the poor