_XXVI.--TARQUIN THE WICKED._
1. For his tyranny King Tarquin was banished from Rome about 500 B.
C., and after his expulsion he sent messengers to Rome to ask that his
property should be given up to him, and the senate decreed that his
prayer should be granted. But the king's ambassadors, while they were
in Rome, stirred up the minds of the young men and others who had been
favored by Tarquin, so that a plot was made to bring him back. Among
those who plotted were Titus and Tiberius, the sons of the consul
Brutus; and they gave letters to the messengers of the king. But it
chanced that a certain slave hid himself in the place where they met,
and overheard them plotting; and he came and told the thing to the
consuls, who seized the messengers of the king with the letters upon
their persons, authenticated by the seals of the young men. The
culprits were immediately arrested; but the ambassadors were let go,
because their persons were regarded as sacred. And the goods of King
Tarquin were given up for plunder to the people.
2. Then the traitors were brought up before the consuls, and the sight
was such as to move all beholders to pity; for among them were the
sons of Lucius Junius Brutus himself, the first consul, the liberator
of the Roman people. And now all men saw how Brutus loved his country;
for he bade the lictors put all the traitors to death, and his own
sons first; and men could mark in his face the struggle between his
duty as a chief magistrate of Rome and his feelings as a father. And
while they praised and admired him they pitied him yet more. This was
the first attempt to restore Tarquin the Proud.
3. When Tarquin saw that the plot at home had failed, he prevailed on
the people of Tarquinii and Veii to make war with him against the
Romans. But the consuls came out against them; Valerius commanding the
main army, and Brutus the cavalry. And it chanced that Aruns, the
king's son, led the cavalry of the enemy. When he saw Brutus, he
spurred his horse against him, and Brutus did not decline the combat.
They rode straight at each other with leveled spears; and so fierce
was the shock, that they pierced each other through from breast to
back, and both fell dead.
4. Then, also, the armies fought, but the battle was neither won nor
lost. But in the night a voice was heard by the Etruscans, saying that
the Romans were the conquerers. So the enemy fled by night; and when
the Romans arose in the morning, there was no man to oppose them. Then
they took up the body of Brutus, and departed home, and buried him in
public with great pomp.
5. And thus the second attempt to restore King Tarquin was frustrated.
After the death of Brutus, Valerius, the remaining consul, ruled the
people for awhile by himself, and began to build himself a house upon
the ridge called Velia, which looks down upon the forum. So the people
thought that he was going to make himself king; but when he heard
this, he called an assembly of the people, and appeared before them
with his fasces lowered, and with no axes in them, whence the custom
remained ever after, that no consular lictors wore axes within the
city, and no consul had power of life and death except when he was in
command of his legions abroad. And he pulled down the beginning of his
house upon the Velia, and built it below that hill. Also, he passed
laws that every Roman citizen might appeal to the people against the
judgment of the chief magistrates. Wherefore he was greatly honored
among the people, and was called _Poplicola_, or _Friend of the People_.
6. After this Valerius called together the great assembly of the
centuries, and they chose Spurius Lucretius, father of Lucretius, to
succeed Brutus. But he was an old man, and not many days afterward he
died, and Marcus Horatius was chosen in his stead.
7. The temple on the Capitol which King Tarquin began had never yet been
consecrated. Then Valerius and Horatius drew lots which should be the
consecrator, and the lot fell on Horatius. But the friends of Valerius
murmured, and they wished to prevent Horatius from having the honor; so,
when he was now saying the prayer of consecration, with his hand upon
the door-post of the temple, there came a messenger who told him that
his son was just dead, and that one mourning for a son could not rightly
consecrate the temple. But Horatius kept his hand upon the door-post,
and told them to see to the burial of his son, and finished the rite of
consecration. Thus did he honor the gods even above his own son.
8. In the next year Valerius was again made consul, with Titus
Lucretius; and Tarquin, despairing now of aid from his friends at Veii
and Tarquinii, went to Lars Porsena of Clusium, a city on the river
Clanis, which falls into the Tiber. Porsena was, at this time,
acknowledged as chief of the twelve Etruscan cities; and he assembled
a powerful army and came to Rome. He came so quickly that he reached
the Tiber, and was near the Sublician Bridge before there was time to
destroy it; and if he had crossed it the city would have been lost.
9. Then, a noble Roman, called Horatius Cocles, of the Lucerian tribe,
with two friends--Spurius Lartius, a Ramnian, and Titus Herminius, a
Titian--posted themselves at the far end of the bridge, and defended
the passage against all the Etruscan host, while the Romans were
cutting it off behind them. When it was all but destroyed, his two
friends retreated across the bridge, and Horatius was left alone to
bear the whole attack of the enemy. He kept his ground, standing
unmoved amid the darts which were showered upon his shield, till the
last beams of the bridge fell crashing into the river. Then he prayed,
saying, "Father Tiber, receive me, and bear me up I pray thee." He
then plunged in, and reached the other side safely; and the Romans
honored him greatly: they put up his statue in the Comitium, and gave
him as much land as he could plow round in a day, and every man at
Rome subscribed the cost of one day's food to reward him.
_Liddell._
10. This story is told in very spirited verse by Macaulay, in his poem
of Horatius: