

TAR 67 



however have shown that the Tarquinii did not come from 

 Etruria, but must originally have belonged to Latium, and 

 that from the earliest times there existed at Rome a gens 

 Tarquinia. (Xiebuhr,.r%/.o/.r?oe,i.,p.373,&c.) We sub- 

 join a list of those members of the house of the Tarquins 

 who play a prominent part in the early history of Rome. 

 _ Lucius TARQUIMUS PRISCUS. The old story concerning 

 his birth and his arrival in Rome ran thus : During the 

 tyranny of Cypselus at Corinth, Demaratus, a wealthy 

 merchant who belonged to the noble family of the Bac- 

 chiads, was obliged by the tyrant to quit his native city. 

 He sailed to Etruria, which he had often visited before on 

 his mercantile voyages, and took up his residence at Tar- 

 quinii. Here he married a woman of noble rank, who 

 bore him two sons, Luciano and Aruns. (Dionys., iii. 46; 

 Liv., i. 34 ; Polyb., vi. 2.) As an aspiring foreigner could 

 never hope to satisfy his ambition in Etruria, Lucumo, 

 after the death of his father and brother, resolved to 

 ate with his wife Tanaquil and a numerous band of 

 fi lends to Home, where several strangers had already ob- 

 tained the highest honours. He was confirmed in his 

 expectations by a miraculous occurrence which happened 

 just when he was approaching the city, and by the inter- 

 pretation of it by his wile, who was well skilled in augury. 

 At Rome Lucumo was favourably received by Kin<r Ancus 

 Marcius, and lands were assigned to him. To omit nothing 

 mi his part which mitrht characterize him as a complete 

 I'oman, he adopted the name of Lucius Tarquinius, to 

 which subsequently the name Priscus was addecf to distin- 

 guish him from other members of his house. His wealth 

 and prudence induced King Ancus to allow Tarquin to 

 take part in all the affairs of state, and in his will lie made 

 him the guardian of his children, who were yet under age. 

 ^ MARCUS.] Tarquin himself aspired to become 

 kinsj of Rome. Accordingly, on the death of Ancus, he ienl 

 the young princes out limiting, and during their absence 

 M the corr.itia for electing a successor to Ancua, and 

 eded in persuading the people to elect him, to the 

 exclusion of the sons nf Aliens, 616 B.C. 



the common story of the descent of the fifth king 

 of Rome, of the manner in which he came to Rome, and 

 aised to the throne. How much there may be his- 

 torical in the tradition cannot be ascertained. Thus 

 much however appears certain, that the arrival of Dema- 

 ratus in Etruiia cannot have been contemporaneous with 

 the tyranny of Cypselus, and that, as stated above, Tar- 



T A R 



quimus was not a foreigner, but belonged to a Latin gens 

 Tarquinia. ; Xielmhr, ///*/. <,f H<,m>\ i.. p. 373, &c.) 

 L. Tarquinius Priscus distinguished himself during his 

 > no less in war than in the peaceful adminisi, 

 e state. His first war was against the Latins, limn 

 whom he took great spoil. With equal success lie car- 

 ried on war with the Suhines, whom he defeated in two 

 great battles, and from whom he took the town of Colla- 

 tia with its tenitory. After this he again made war on 

 the Latin*, and iiiler lie had subdued them and made 

 himself master of many of their towns, he concluded a 

 peace with them. During the intervals between these 

 1 10 introduced \arious improvements into the consti- 

 tution of the Mate, which are mentioned in the a> 

 ROME, p. 104, and SENATUS, and which were intended 

 to oi'L body of the plebeians, and perhaps to 



place them on an equality with the patricians. Hut he 

 could only partially carry his schemes into effect, as he w;is 

 thwarted by the auuur Attus .\;uius, who probablv acted 

 at the instigation of the patricians. After his first Latin 

 war, Tarquin built the Circus Maximus for the exhibition 

 of the public spectacles, and is said to have been the 

 founder of the Roman or great games ^Ludi Magni or 

 Romaui:. He also assigned the ground round the forum 

 to private individuals, that they mi^lit there build pot 

 .laces for transacting bu.-incss: and lastly he i 

 .e formed the plan of enclosing the city by a stone 

 wall, which he was prevented from accomplishing by the 

 outbreak of the Sabinc war. After the second war against 

 the Latins, he recurred to his plan, and is said to have made 

 ions for building the wall ; but the comple- 

 tion o .ed for his successor Servius Tullins. 

 The greatest work at Rome, which owes its origin to Tar- 

 aiid which has survived all the vicissitudes of the 

 re the gigantic sewers (cloacae) in the lower districts 



U.A.] 



The sons of Ancus Mart-ins, who had been deprived of 



the throne by their guardian Tarquin, never forgot the 

 injury, and when they discovered that it was his and Tana- 

 quil's intention to secure the succession to Servius Tullius, 

 they formed the design of murdering Tarquin. [SERVIUS 

 TULLIUS.] For this purpose they hired two sturdy shep- 

 herds, who went to the king's palace, and there con- 

 ducted themselves as if they were engaged in a violent 

 quarrel. At last the king himself appeared to settle their 

 dispute, but while he was listening to one of them, the 

 other split the king's head with an axe. Thus died L. 

 Tarquinius Priscus, after a reign of thirty-eight years, in 

 B.C. 578. The queen kept his death secret until the suc- 

 cession was secured to Servius Tullius. The assassins were 

 seized, and the sons of Ancus fled to Suessa Pometia. 

 (Livy, i. 34-42; Dionysius, iii. 46-73.) Tarquinius Priscus 

 left two sons, Lucius and Aruns Tarquinius. 



During the reign of this king Rome appears as a power- 

 ful state in comparison with what it is said to have been be- 

 fore him. According to the historians this greatness was 

 not the result of his reign, but is supposed to have existed 

 before it, and to have enabled him to do what he did, so 

 that this increase of the power and dominion of Rome 

 must have taken place previous to his reign, although we 

 do not know how it was effected. Some traditions men- 

 tioned (Tacitus, Anna!., iv. 65) that under Tarquinius 

 Priscus an Etruscan of the name of Caeles Vibenna came 

 with a colony to Rome and settled on the Caelian hill, 

 which derived its name from him. 



Lucius TARQUIMUS SUPERBUS-, the seventh and last king 

 of Rome, was the son of Tarquinius Priscus, and brother of 

 Aruns. Tullia, a daughter of Servius Tullius, was married 

 to the gentle Aruns, and her sister to L. Tarquinius. In con- 

 cert with Lucius, Tullia murdered her own husband Aruns 

 and her sister, and then married L. Tarquinius. Lucius 

 placed himself at the head of a conspiracy, and murdered 

 his own father-in-law, the aged Servius Tullius. Tarqui- 

 nius, who received the surname of the Haughty or the 

 Tyrant (Superbusl, succeeded his father-in-law as king of 

 Rome, 584 B.C., without either being elected by the peo- 

 ple or confirmed by the senate. 



There is no doubt that the hatred of the very name of 

 king which prevailed at Rome during the republic, has 

 greatly contributed to exaggerate the cruelty and tyranny 

 of the last king, and thus to corrupt his history. But not- 

 withstanding all this, it is clear that Tarquin by his talents, 

 both as a general and a statesman, quickly raised Rome to 

 a degree of power which it had never possessed before. 

 The first act attributed to him after his accession is the 

 death of all the senators who had supported the reforms of 

 Servius Tullius. and in order to render his own person 

 safe, he formed an armed body-guard which always accom- 

 panied him. He in fact undid all that Servius had done : 

 he took on himself the administration of justice, put pei-- 

 sons to death or sent them into exile according to nis own 

 pleasure, and kept the whole internal and external adminis- 

 tration in his own handsj without, either consulting the 

 people or the senate. In order that the senate might, sink 

 into insignificance, he never filled up the vacancies which 

 so frequently occurred through his executions, banish- 

 ments, or through the natural death of senators. To 

 secure himself still more, he formed a close connection 

 with the Latins, to one of whom, Octavius Mamilius of 

 Tusculum, he gave his own daughter in marriage. The 

 influence which he thus gained among the Latins was 

 most visible in their assemblies on the Alban Mount by the 

 temple of Jupiter Latiaris, in which Rome also had a 

 vote. Tarquinius, by cunning and fraud, or, according to 

 others, by force of arms, subdued the towns of Latium and 

 placed Rome at the head of the league (Livy, i. 50, &c. ; 

 Dionysius, iv. 45, &c. ; Cicero, De lie Publ., li. 24), which 

 was now also joined by the Hernicans and the Volscian 

 towns of Ecetra and Antinm. The wealthy town of Suessa 

 Pometia was besieged and taken, perhaps because it. had 

 refused to join the league. The Latin town of Gabii ex- 

 perienced a similar fate. Sextus, the king's youngest, son, 

 went thither under the pretext of being a deserter, and 

 contrived to put himself at the head of the Gabian army. 

 After having put to death or sent into exile the most dis- 

 -hcd citizens of Gabii by the advice of his father, he 

 treacherously surrendered the town to him. The whole 

 account of the war with Gabii bears the character of a 

 fable, and resembles in many respects other fabulous stories 

 of early Grecian history. The treaty which was formed 



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