The last King of Rome was Tarquin the Proud. His misrule, and the
insolent heartlessness of his family, especially of his son Sextus,
brought about their expulsion from Rome and the end of the kingship.
Sextus had, by guile, got into the town of Gabii but was at a loss how
to make himself master there. He managed to send out a messenger to his
father. It was summer. In the garden where the King was walking,
poppies--white and purple--were growing in long ranks. Tarquin said
nothing to the messenger: only as he walked he struck off with his staff
the heads of the tallest poppies, one after another, without saying a
word. Sextus, when the messenger came back and described to him his
father's action, understood. Pitilessly he put the leading men of Gabii
to the sword.
It was the misdeeds of this Sextus that brought the proud house of
Tarquin to the ground. He tried to force his brutal love on the fair
Lucretia, the wife of his cousin Collatinus, and so shamed her that,
after telling her husband how she had been wronged, Lucretia killed
herself before his eyes and those of his friend Brutus. Stirred to
deepest wrath, Collatinus and Brutus then swore a great oath to drive
the house of Tarquin from Rome and henceforth allow no king to rule over
the free people of the city. When they had told their fellow citizens
how Sextus had wronged Lucretia, a daughter of one of the proudest
families in the city, and reminded them of the oppression and injustice
they had all suffered at the hands of his family, the leading men of
Rome rose up and drove the Tarquins out. The city was proclaimed for
ever a republic to be ruled not by any one man but by the will and for
the good of all free men who dwelt in it. Some there were, however, who
took the side of Tarquin and tried to bring him back. Among them were
the two sons of Brutus. They were captured and brought up for judgement,
and like the others condemned to death. Brutus was the judge. Though
they were his sons and he loved them he condemned them unflinchingly.
Without any sign of feeling he saw them go to their death. An action for
which he would have sentenced another man seemed to him no less wrong
when committed by his own children.
_The Death of Lucretia_
They tried to soothe her grief, laying the blame, not on the
unwilling victim, but on the perpetrator of the offence. 'It is
the mind,' they said, 'not the body that sins. Where there is no
intention, there is no fault,' 'It is for you,' she replied, 'to
consider the punishment that is his due; I acquit myself of guilt,
but I do not free myself from the penalty; no woman who lives
after her honour is lost shall appeal to the example of Lucretia,'
Then she took a knife which she had hidden under her dress,
plunged it into her heart, and dropping down soon expired. Her
husband and father made the solemn invocation of the dead.
While the others were occupied in mourning, Brutus drew the knife
from the wound, held it still reeking before him, and exclaimed,
'I swear by this blood, pure and undefiled before the prince's
outrage, and I call you, gods, to witness, that I will punish
Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, his impious wife, and all his children
with fire and sword to the utmost of my power, and that I will not
allow them or any other to rule in Rome.' After this, he handed
the knife to Collatinus, next to Lucretius and Valerius, all
amazed at Brutus and perplexed to account for his new spirit of
authority. They took the oath as he directed and, changing wholly
from grief to anger, they obeyed his summons to follow him and
make an immediate end of the royal power.
The body of Lucretia was brought from her house and carried to the
Forum, the people thronging round, as was natural, in wonder at
this strange and cruel sight, and loud in condemning the crime of
Tarquinius. They were deeply moved by the father's sorrow, and
still more by the words of Brutus, who rebuked their tears and
idle laments, urging them to act like men and Romans by taking up
arms against the common enemy.
Livy, i. 58. 9-59. 4.
[Illustration: ETRUSCAN SOLDIER
from a Brit. Mus. bronze]