222 The Kingdom. R 0 
a hurdle .being laid upon him, and stones laid upon the 
hurdle, he was pressed down into the water and drowned. 
In consequence of this treachery, Tarquin was looked upon 
by the Latins as their deliverer, and declared general of the 
Latin armies ; soon after which, the Hernici and two tribes 
of the Volsci entered into an alliance with him on the same 
terms. In order to keep these confederates together, Tar¬ 
quin, with their consent, erected a-temple to Jupiter Latialis 
on a hill near the ruins of Alba, where he appointed certain 
feasts, called Fence Latince , to be held on fhe 27th of April, 
where the several nations were to sacrifice together, and on 
no account to commit any hostilities against each other 
during their continuance. The king then proceeded fo make 
war on the rest of the Volsci who had refused to enter into 
an alliance with him. Some depredations which they had 
committed in the territories of the Latins served for a pre¬ 
tence to begin the war; but as Tarquin had no confidence 
in the Romans, his army was composed only of a small body 
of them who were incorporated among the Latin auxiliaries, 
and this mercenary army at once enslaved his people at 
home, and subdued his foreign enemies. He routed the 
Volsci, took one of their cities by storm, and gave the booty 
to his soldiers. He next turned his arms against the Sabines, 
whom he entirely defeated in two engagements, and made 
the whole nation tributary: for which exploits he decreed 
himself two triumphs, and on his return to Rome, he em¬ 
ployed the populace in finishing the sewers and circus which 
had been begun by his grandfather Tarquin I. 
In the mean time, the persecutions of Tarquin against 
his own subjects daily drove some of the most considerable 
into banishment. A great number of patricians took refuge 
in Gabii, a city of Latium about 13 miles from Rome ; where 
the inhabitants, touched with compassion for their misfor¬ 
tunes, not only received them with kindness, but began a 
war with Tarquin on their account. The Gabitii seem to 
have been the most formidable enemies whom the Romans 
had hitherto met with; since Tarquin was obliged to raise 
a prodigious bulwark to cover the city on the side of Gabii. 
The war lasted seven years; during which time, by the mu¬ 
tual devastations committed by the two armies, a great 
scarcity of provisions took place in Rome. The people soon 
grew clamorous; and Tarpuin being unable either to quiet 
them, or to reduce the Gabini, fell upon the following dis¬ 
honourable and treacherous expedient. His son Sextus Tar- 
quinius pretended to be on very bad terms with his father, 
and openly inveighed against him as a tyrant; on which he 
was proclaimed a rebel, and publicly beaten in the forum. 
This being reported at Gabii, by persons sent thither on 
purpose, the inhabitants became very desirous of having 
Sextus among them; and accordingly he soon went thither, 
having previously obtained a solemn promise from the inha¬ 
bitants never to deliver him up to his father. Here he made 
frequent inroads into the Roman territories, and always came 
back laden with spoil, his father sending against him only 
such weak parties as must infallibly be worsted. By this 
means he soon came to have such a high degree of credit 
among the Gabini, that he was chosen general of their army, 
and was as much master at Gabii as Tarquin was at Rome. 
Finding then that his authority was sufficiently established, 
he dispatched a slave to his father for instructions; but the 
king, unwilling to return an explicit answer, only took the 
messenger into the garden, where he struck off the heads of 
the tallest poppies. Sextus understood that by this hint the 
king desired him to put to death the leading men in the city 
of Gabii, which he immediately put in execution; and 
while the city was in confusion on account of this massacre, 
he opened the gates to his father, who took possession of the 
city with all the pride of a conqueror.—The inhabitants 
dreaded every thing from the haughty tyranny of the Roman 
monarch : however, on this occasion he consulted his policy 
rather than his revenge ; granted them their life, liberty, and 
estates, and even entered into a treaty of alliance with them. 
The articles were written on the hide of an ox, which was 
still to be seen in the time of Augustus, in the temple of 
M E. The Kingdom; 
Jupiter Fidius. After this, however, he made his son Sextipf 
king of Gabii; sending off also his other two sons, Titus 
and Arunx, the one to build a city at' Signia, the other'at 
Circaeum, a promontory of the Tyrrhene sea, and both these 
to keep the Volsci in awe. 
For some time Tarquin now enjoyed a profound peace ; 
the Romans, being accustomed to oppression and the yoke 
of an imperious master, making no opposition to his" will. 
During this interval Tarquin met with the celebrated adven¬ 
ture of the Sibyl; whose books were afterwards held in high 
estimation at Rome, and Tarquin appointed two persons of 
distinction to take care of them. These were called Duum¬ 
viri but their number was afterwards increased to 10, when 
they were called Decemviri; and then to 15, when they 
were termed Huindecemviri. At this time also the written 
civil law had its origin among the Romans; all the statutes 
enacted by the kings being collected into one body ; which, 
from Papirius, the name of the collector, was called the 
Papirian law. The temple of the Capitol was also finished, 
for which purpose the most skilful architects and workmen 
were brought from Etruria, the populace being obliged to 
serve them in the most laborious parts. 
The discontent excited by this employment was increased 
by the exorbitant levies for the erection of these edifices. 
Suddenly a plague broke out at Rome, and the rutili attacked 
the frontiers. The king marched against the latter enemies, 
but they made so prolonged a resistance that he was com¬ 
pelled to demand fresh taxes of his oppressed subjects. Just 
as these injuries had ripened the minds of all the people for 
rebellion, a domestic injury was committed by the son of 
the king that blew the slumbering combustion into a flame, 
and overthrew at once the regal power. We have, under 
the article Chastity, told the story of the rape of Lucretia; 
and under Lucretia we have copied some forcible objec¬ 
tions to the veracity of her story. Whether she was a weak 
but violent woman, who had been seduced by the arts of 
Sextus, and who, fearing disclosure from his indiscretion, 
anticipated his boasting by a great revenge; or, whether she 
was indeed that saint-like model of purity on which the 
mind dwells as on an oasis in the barren field of history— 
matters not to the freedom of her country. Her dead body 
was carried into the most frequented part of the city, ana 
Brutus was there to expatiate on her virtues, to tell the tale of 
her injuries and her death. He was a man whose father and 
brother had been killed, and whose patrimony had been 
usurped by Tarquinius, and who had only preserved his own 
life by counterfeiting folly and subjecting himself for many 
years to the derision of the court, consoled only by the 
expectation of his revenge. 
The people easily forgot his counterfeited folly in his pre¬ 
sent appearance, and they had at once an assurance of his 
shrewdness, and a belief that the gods were propitious to 
him from the following anecdote circulated by his friends. 
It was given out, that when Tarquin sent his sons Titus and 
Arunx to consult the oracle of Delphi, the princes took 
Brutus along with them, to divert themselves with his pre¬ 
tended folly by the way; that Brutus chose for his offering 
to the Delphic Apollo a stick of elder, which occasioned 
much laughter, but that he had the precaution to inclose a rod 
of gold within the stick. The priestess gave the princes for 
answer, that he who should first kiss his mother should suc¬ 
ceed Tarquin in the government of Rome; upon which the 
two brothers either drew lots which of them should kiss their 
mother at their return, or agreed to do it at once, that both 
might reign jointly : but Brutus, imagining the oracle had 
another meaning, fell down and kissed the earth, the com¬ 
mon mother of all living. This man now appeared upon 
the tribune, related the story of his own wrongs, his illus¬ 
trious birth, and long-tried perseverance. He recapitulated 
the usurpation, the murders and proscriptions committed by 
Tarquin; reminded the people of the indignity they suffered 
in being forced to work at building temples and repairing 
sewers. The oppressive taxes, the unjust laws, and the 
abrogation of Servius’s enactments, were not forgotten. He 
forbade 
