CHAP. IV. TARQUIN THE PROUD. 55 connected he divided into four quarters-the Palatine, the Suburran, the Colline, and the Esquiline-and the citizens into four tribes corresponding to them. The Roman territory he distributed among six-and-twenty tribes, and all these were again divided according to the census of their means into classes and centuries. The organization of the city was military as well as aristocratic; but the reign of Servius was generally peaceful, and the lands he acquired by the wars in which he allowed himself to engage he distributed for the most part among the poorer classes. He thus engaged the enmity of his nobles, and became the victim of a conspiracy which they covertly favored. The legend, as we have seen, had said that this king was son-inlaw of his predecessor; but the legend belied itself, and spoke of the two daughters of Servius as married to the sons of Tarquinius. We can only repeat the famous story as it has come down to us. The ambitious Tullia was married to the gentle Aruns, her gentle sister to the proud and cruel Lucius. Tullia ridded herself both of her husband and her sister, and became the spouse of the man who was congenial to her. Servius, in his distress, would have renounced the throne and handed over the Romans to the popular government of consuls. Lucius alarmed the nobles with the prospect of degradation thus opened to them, and when he threw himself upon the aged king and cast him down the steps of the curia, and when Tullia drove her chariot ruthlessly over her father's body, the Senate acquiesced in the deed and in the usurpation of royal power by the murderer. The people grieved over the slaughter of their patron, and from that dreadful day dates the long career of jealousy between the rival parties in the Roman state. The street in which Tullia had committed her accursed crime was branded from that time forth with the title of "Sceleratus;" but the murder of the popular sovereign was not fully avenged upon the Senate till Julius Cæsar crushed them at Pharsalia, and made himself more than a king over them. The idea of the Roman legend begins to expand. If Servius was unjustly regarded as a tyrant, the second of the Tarquins was a tyrant indeed. He was a tyrant of the true historic U.O. 220. type, dividing the Senate by his intrigues, and ruling .. 534. over one party through the favor of another; strengthening him self by family alliance with other tyrants around him, and presuming on his strength to control with a high hand all classes of his subjects, whom he murdered, pillaged, and banished according to his royal caprice. Nor was he less powerful or less grasping abroad than at home. From being one only of an equal confedcration of forty-seven cities which held their common festival in the temple of Jupiter Latialis on the Alban Mount, Rome under his sway became the chief and mistress of all, and carried her victorious arms into the country of the Hernici and the Volsci, whom she despoiled of part of their territories, and established her military outposts in the midst of them. The colonies of Signia and Circeii, composed of Roman and Latin citizens transplanted from their own homes and endowed with conquered lands, constituted the first of the long list of affiliated commonwealths with which Rome secured her conquests and enriched her people. The younger Tarquin was also, like his father, a great builder. His architects were his Etruscan allies, his workmen the captives of his Volscian or Latin wars. He completed the magnificent works already undertaken, the construction of the Cloaca and of the Capitol, the name of which was said to be derived from the head of a certain Tolus discovered in digging for the foundations. Beneath the substruction of this mighty edifice were enshrined the prophetic volumes which were offered to the Roman sovereign, nine in number, by the Sibyl of Cumæ. The destinies of the city and perhaps of the world were declared to be contained therein, and the inspired donor demanded a price corresponding to their value. Tarquin refused: she departed, burned three of them, and returning required no less a price for the six remaining. Again Tarquin refused, and again the Sibyl destroyed three volumes, and once more insisted on the first price for the three she still offered. Then at last Tarquin yielded, and the volumes, now trebly precious, were thenceforth preserved as the most sacred treasure of the Roman state. From time to time, in seasons of most pressing danger, they were solemnly opened and consulted by the high officer to whom their keeping was intrusted, and became, more than once, an important instrument of government in the hands of the priests and nobles. But the story of Tarquin the Proud, as he is specially designated, waxes more and more romantic. Alarmed by omens and prodigies, he sends his two sons, together with his nephew Brutus, who was counterfeiting idiocy as a protection from the suspected designs of his uncle, to consult the Oracle of Delphi on the fortunes of his house. "And which of us," asked the princes, "shall succeed him in power?" "He," replied the priestess, "who shall be first to salute his mother." On their return the sons of Tarquin hurried off to the chamber of the women, but Brutus slipped, as if by accident, and embraced the earth, the common mother of all men. The prescience of the deity was soon to be put to the proof. Tarquin, it seems, was engaged at the time before Ardea, the capital of the Rutuli. The Roman forces were detained by the protracted operations of a blockade, and the young nobles serving in the army were at a loss for occupation. They amused their CHAP. IV. THE REGIFUGIUM. 57 idleness as best they might, and one day there arose a dispute among a party of them as to the merits of their respective consorts at home. They mounted their horses and galloped off at night to test the qualities of their ladies by the employments in which they should find them engaged. Now the ladies too, like their lords, were the most part idling and amusing themselves. But Lucretia, the wife of Collatinus, the fairest and the sagest of all, was discovered busy at her loom, with her handmaids plying their tasks around her. Decision was promptly made in her favor, and the party hastened back to their posts. But Sextus, the son of Tarquin, returned quickly, gained access to the chaste matron under cover of his friendship with her husband, and at dead of night stole to her couch and threatened her with proclaiming her dishonor, and laying in proof of it the dead body of a murdered slave beside her, unless she submitted to his embraces. Lucretia was overcome; but when the ravisher retired in the morning she sent to her husband Collatinus and her father Lucretius, and on their arrival, accompanied by Brutus and Volumnius, confessed her enforced disloyalty, and straightway slew herself in their presence. They all vowed vengeance upon the culprit and his hated family, and Brutus, throwing off the disguise of stupidity, took the lead among them. The body was carried into the Forum, and Brutus, waving the bloody weapon, adjured the Roman people to rise against the tyrant. A decree was passed at the instant to dethrone the reigning family and expel them from the city. When Tarquin hastened back with his army he found the gates closed, and was constrained to retire into Etruria, where he took refuge at Cære. U.C. 245. At this juncture the tradition of the descent of the Tarquins from Etruria comes into full play. From Veii as well as from his own ancestral Tarquinii the exiled monarch derives promises of assistance. Envoys are sent to negotiate for his return, or at least for the cession of his estates; but baffled in these endeavors they enter into a conspiracy with some of the young patricians for his restoration. The plot is revealed by the slave Vindicius, and the list of criminals contains the names of two sons of Brutus himself. The liberator in his chair of office sits in judgment upon them, sentences them to death by the lictor's axe, and with constant resolution presides in person at their punishment. The cause of the patriots is the cause of the people, but their support is secured against the machinations of malcontent nobles by the division among them of the tyrant's estates, and the assignment of seven jugera apiece. The plain which extended towards the Tiber above the city is now consecrated to Mars, and becomes the famous resort of the Romans for their warlike exercises. The corn which was beginning to wave over it was cut down and cast into the river; about the heap which it formed in mid-channel towards the centre of the city the silt of the torrent gradually accumulated, and grew to be the island named after the god Esculapius. Meanwhile the enemy was advancing. The legions of Rome marched forth to the encounter. Brutus and Aruns, one of the sons of Tarquin, fell in combat one with the other. As with the leaders so with their followers; they fell man for man on either side, and the fortune of the day remained undecided, till after both forces had withdrawn for the night a voice was heard from the forest of Arsia, which declared that "Rome had lost one warrior less than Etruria." This sufficed for the Etruscans, who retired in dismay. Valerius re-entered Rome at the head of the conquerors, and pronounced the funeral eulogium of the valiant Brutus; the matrons of Rome wore mourning in his honor for the space of a year, and the people raised to him a statue, sword in hand, on the Capitol. To complete the legend of the Regifugium, or banishment of the kings, the Etruscans are represented to have persisted in their attempt in favor of their kinsman. Again their efforts redounded to the glory of Rome, and to the sanctification, by the devotion it excited, of the cause of Roman freedom. Thus Porsena, king of Clusium, though he reached the bridge, was baffled by the strenuous gallantry of, Horatius Cocles, who maintained U.C. 247. his post thereon till the Romans could cut it down beB.C. 507. hind him, and then leaped all armed into the Tiber. Thus again was he baffled by the high spirit of Clolia, who escaped from her captivity and swam the rapid river on horseback. Once more he was baffled by the constancy of Mutius Scævola, one of three hundred young Romans who had vowed to slay him, who, when captured and interrogated by the tyrant, thrust his hand into the fire to show that no torture would avail against him. The legend, however, vacillated as to the main issue. While one stream of tradition asserted that the invader was triumphantly repulsed, another, to which the gravest authorities did not refuse credence, admitted that the city was surrendered to Porsena, and that he withdrew from it with honorable forbearance in admiration of the valor of its defenders. Tarquin however, it was reported, though abandoned by his most powerful patron, renewed the attack with the aid of allies U.c. 258. from Latium. The battle of the lake Regillus, near B.C. 496. Alba, was the crowning incident of this epic chant. Valerius at the crisis of the battle had vowed a temple to Castor and Pollux. Presently two youths of eminent beauty and stature were seen fighting on white horses in front of the Romans, and CHAP. V. EARLY CONSTITUTION OF ROME. 59 turning the enemy to flight. While the victors were still engaged in the pursuit, the same unearthly warriors appeared suddenly in the Forum at Rome, washed their arms at the fountain of Juturna, announced the victory, and straightway vanished. The leaders on both sides had met in single combat, and among the Romans fell a Valerius, a Herminius, and an Æbutius. On the other side were slain Mamilius, the dictator of Alba, and Titus, the last surviving son of Tarquin, for Sextus seems to have met a violent death already; and finally Tarquin himself, though he escaped from the last of his fields, deprived of all assistance, perished in a miserable old age at the court of the tyrant of Cumæ. Thus far the reputed history of Rome is a series of poetical legends, from which it is impossible to extricate whatever elements of real fact it may and does probably contain. Henceforth, though the legendary character of the narrative is still repeatedly apparent, we may admit that it has at least an historic basis, and trace with more satisfaction the thread by which the institutions of the city are constantly interwoven with the fortunes ascribed to it. CHAPTER V. The constitution of the Roman Commonwealth on the expulsion of the Kings, and its pretended foundation on the polity of Servius. THE expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome, as of the Pisistratids about the same moment from Athens, as of other usurping families in all ages and countries, was the effort of the popular force rising in arms against despotic domination. The history of popular government in Rome dates from the abolition of the regal name and office and the formal establishment of the commonwealth. But the long struggle of the commonalty of the city against the oligarchy was, in fact, only commencing. In order to strengthen their claim to political consideration the commons pretended to derive their rights from an earlier legislation. They appealed to the traditional constitution of Servius as the charter of their privileges, and declared that the various disabilities under which they actually lay were due to the lawless encroachments of the tyrant whom they had rightfully displaced. The constitution of Servius was the ideal to which their cries for political reform were directed-an ideal which, if conceded in name, their opponents contrived by every device to extenuate and |