240 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[Sept. 29. 1855. 



dignity? I believe he had. Servius, the predecessor 

 of Tarquin II., is said by one account to have been 

 a companion of Ccelius, and to have been ori«> inally 

 named Mastarna. " Companion of Ccelius " seems 

 to point to his having been a Clusian, Coslius 

 being evidently only another form of Clus — the 

 name of the Etruscan town deprived of its Latin 

 termination ; and Mastarna is simply the Celtic 

 title Mactiern (son of the chief). Even admitting 

 that the Etruscans were not Celts, Servius may 

 easily have had a Celtic title, for the Gauls had 

 been established in the neighbourhood of Clusiura 

 for a considerable time. On these grounds I con- 

 jecture Servius to have been the son of the then 

 lars of Clusiura. 



We now see why Porsena led his expedition 

 against Rome. Servius, to whom he was related, 

 had been barbarously murdered by the Tarquinian 

 family, one of whom then usurped his throne. 

 Porsena went to Rome to revenge the death of 

 Servius and to put down the Usurper. This sup- 

 position that Tarquin was expelled by Porsena, 

 is certainly contradictory to the testimony of all 

 antiquity ; but this testimony was caused by a 

 mistake in the name of the family which he in- 

 tended to restore. Porsena came to Rome to 

 reinstate, not the Tarquinian but the Clusian 

 family on the throne of Rome in his own person. 



Porsena did not enjoy his kingdom any length 

 of time. If he had, it would have been impossible 

 for the fact of his liaving been king to have been 

 so entirely unknown to the later Roman historians. 

 Some of the Tarquins probably fled to Cumse, 

 •where Aristodemus ruled, and persuaded him to 

 make war upon Porsena, and the result was the 

 defeat of Porsena's son, Aruns, before the walls of 

 Aricia. The Romans took advantage of this to 

 expel Porsena, and thus throw off all connexion 

 ■with both the contending monarchs. 



I will finish by making an application of our 

 knowledge that Porsena was king of Rome to the 

 illustration of the origin of the received account 

 of the expulsion of the Tarquins. Porsena was, 

 as I have shown, the real last king of Rome, but 

 Tarquin was believed to have been so. Events 

 which happened in the reign of Porsena were 

 therefore attributed to the other, just as events 

 ■which happened in the time of the real first dic- 

 tator, Valerius, were attributed to the supposed 

 first dictator, Larcius. This confusion, moreover, 

 was favoured by the resemblance between the 

 names Porsena and Tarquin, — a resemblance so 

 great, that one modern author at least has not 

 scrupled to identify the two monarchs. The ac- 

 count of the expulsion of the Tarquins is simply a 

 second edition of the events which led to the ex- 

 pulsion of Porsena. That resulted from the con- 

 duct of his son Aruns, while besiegirig a Latin 

 city, Aricia; so Tarquin's expulsion was said to 

 have been caused by the conduct of his son (and 



No. 309.] J 



his name is sometimes given as Aruns), and this 

 while besieging a Latin city with a name resem- 

 bling Aricia — Ardea. This latter story must be 

 the false one, for we know from the treaty with 

 Carthage in the first year of the republic, that 

 Ardea was then subject to Rome. The story of 

 Lucretia is of course a repetition of the story of 

 Virginia. 



I can back the theory laid down above by other 

 arguments and evidence, which, for brevity's sake, 

 I have abstained from bringing forward on the 

 present occasion. E. West. 



JUNIUS MISCELLANIES. 



A Vellum-bound Junius found in America. — 

 On a visit last summer to a friend in the High- 

 lands, one of our conversations happening to turn 

 on the Letters of Junius, he mentioned a curious 

 on dit on that subject. It is as follows. On the 

 death of one of the Federal Judges (Mr. Buckner 

 Thruston) some years ago in Washington City, his 

 furniture was sold at auction at one of the court 

 sales which are usual in this country. Among the 

 articles sold was an old secretary or writing-desk, 

 with the cypher " C. L." in brass at the top. The 

 purchaser of this desk sent it to a cabinet-maker 

 to be repaired, &c., and the workman, in the 

 course of his operations, opened a secret drawer, 

 in which he found a sealed packet, which be took 

 to the owner of the desk. On being opened, it 

 was found to be two small volumes of Junius''s 

 Letters, bound in vellum. The books had the ap- 

 pearance of not having been used, though there 

 were stains on them, such as paper gets from 

 being long kept in a close place. Remembering 

 to have read some thirty years ago in Woodfall's 

 Junius a private letter, in which Junius requests 

 the father of Woodfall to let him have a set bound 

 in vellum, and gilt, I questioned my friend whether 

 the volumes were represented to be gilt. He 

 thought not, but was uncertain. Still it struck 

 me as a singular circumstance that the only copy 

 which I had ever heard of, of Junius bound in 

 vellum, should be found in a private drawer in 

 the house of a legatee of one of the many persons 

 for whom the authorship of the letters had been 

 claimed. In the will of the celebrated General 

 Charles Lee, second in command to General 

 Washington in the war of the American Revolu- 

 tion, after leaving a legacy to Charles Minn 

 Thruston, Esq., one of his executors, he says, 

 " To Buckner Thruston, his son, I leave all my 

 books, as I know he will make a good use of 

 them." This Buckner Thruston afterwards be- 

 came the judge mentioned above. Though aware 

 that many regarded the claim set up for General 

 Lee as not entitled to much weight, still being 

 prepared, should I live to see Junius discovered, 



