into the ranks of the Kings of Etruria; a position which led him to
indulge in the most extravagant desires. He must needs have a crown of
gold, which often tears or encumbers the brow it adorns; a throne of
ivory, on whose too highly polished surface the foot is apt to slip; and
a sceptre, having on its top an eagle, which frequently gives wings to
the power it is intended to typify. His robe was of purple, with so
costly an edging, that the border exceeded all reasonable limits, and
furnished an instance of extravagance carried to the extreme, while the
rate at which he went on may be judged from the fact of his always
driving four in hand in his chariot. He did not, however, wholly neglect
the useful in his taste for the ornamental; and though his extravagance
must have been a drain upon the public pocket, he devoted himself to the
more honourable drainage of the lower portions of the city. He set an
example to all future commissioners of sewers, by his great work of the
_Cloaca Maxima_, some portion of which still exists, and which contains,
in its spacious vault, a far more honourable monument than the most
magnificent tomb that could have been raised to his memory.
Tarquinius had reigned about thirty-eight years, when the sons of Ancus
Martius, who had been from the first brooding over their own ejection
from the throne, carried their brooding so far as to hatch a conspiracy,
which, though regarded by the best authorities as a mare's nest, forms
one of those "lays" of ancient Rome which tradition gives as part of her
history. The youths, expecting that Tarquinius would secure the
succession to a favourite, named Servius Tullius, made an arrangement
with a couple of shepherds, who, pretending to have a quarrel, went with
hatchets in their hands to the king, and requested him to settle their
little difference. Tarquinius seems to have been in a most accommodating
humour, for he is said to have stepped to the door of the palace, to
arbitrate between these most un-gentle shepherds, who, pretending that
they only came with their hatchets to axe his advice, began to axe him
about the head; and while he was endeavouring to act as an arbitrator,
they, acting as still greater traitors, cruelly made away with him. The
lictors who stood by must have had their faces and their fasces turned
the wrong way, for they administered a beating to the shepherds when,
too late, after the regal crown was already cracked beyond the
possibility of repair, and the king was almost knocked to pieces before
he had time to collect himself.
Tarquinius was a practical reformer, and rested his fame on the most
durable foundations, among which the still-existing remains of the
Cloaca Maxima, or largest common sewer, have already been noticed. Those
who are over nice might feel repugnant to come down to posterity by such
a channel; but that country is fortunate indeed in which genius seeks
"the bubble reputation" at the mouth of the sewer, instead of in the
mouth of the cannon.
It must be recorded, to the honour of Tarquinius, that he organised the
plebeians, and elevated some of them to the rank of patricians, thus
giving vigour to the aristocratic body, which runs the risk of becoming
corrupt, and losing its vitality, unless a supply of plebeian life-blood
is from time to time poured into it.
This measure would have been followed by other wholesome reforms, but
for the short-sighted and selfish policy of the patricians themselves,
who could not perceive the fact, full of apparent paradoxes, that if
anything is to remain, it must not stand still; that no station can be
stationary with safety to itself; and that nothing possessed of vitality
can grow old without something new being continually added.
The sixth king of Rome was Servius Tullius, who is said to have been the
son of a female in the establishment of Tanaquil. His mother's name was
Ocrisia; but there is something vague about the paternity of the boy,
which has been assigned sometimes to the Lar, or household god of the
establishment, and sometimes to Vulcan. Whoever may have been the
father, it was soon intimated that the child was to occupy a high
position; and on one occasion, when sleeping in his cradle, his head was
seen to be on fire; but no one was allowed to blow out the poor boy's
brains, or otherwise extinguish the flame, which was rapidly consuming
the hair on the head of the future heir to the monarchy. The nurses and
attendants were ordered to sit down and see the fire burn out of its own
accord, which, the tradition says, it did, though common sense says it
couldn't; for the unfortunate infant must have died of consumption had
he been suffered to blaze away in the cool manner spoken of. Though of
common origin, at least on his mother's side, young Servius Tullius was
supposed to have been completely purified by the fire, which warmed the
hearts of all who came near him; and not only did the queen adopt him as
her own son, but the partial baking had produced such an effect upon his
very ordinary clay, that he was treated like a brick required for the
foundations of the royal house into which Tarquinius cemented him, by
giving him, as a wife, one of the daughters of the royal family.
Tanaquil having kept secret her husband's death, Servius Tullius
continued for some time to carry on the business of government, just as
if nothing had happened. When it was at length felt that the young
favourite of fortune had got the reins fairly in his hands, the murder
came out, and the barbarous assassination of Tarquinius was published to
the multitude. Servius was the first instance of a king who mounted the
throne without the aid of the customary pair of steps, consisting of an
election by the Senate, and a confirmation by the Curiæ.
It might have been expected that Servius, when elevated above his own
humble stock, might have held his head so high and become so
stiff-necked as to prevent him from noticing the rank from which he had
sprung; but, on the contrary, he exalted himself by endeavouring to
raise others. His reign was not a continued round of fights, for he
preferred the trowel to the sword, and, instead of cutting his name with
the latter weapon, he wisely chose to build up his reputation with the
former instrument. His first care was to complete the city, to which he
added three hills, feeling, perhaps, that his fame would become as
ancient as the hills themselves; and with a happy perception that if
"walls have ears" they are just as likely to have tongues, he surrounded
Rome with a wall, which might speak to future ages of his spirit and
enterprise. He was a friend to insolvent debtors, to whom he gave the
benefit of an act of unexampled liberality. Desiring them to make out
schedules of their liabilities, he paid off the creditors in a double
sense, for they were extremely reluctant to receive the cash, the
payment of which cashiered their claim on the person and possessions of
their debtors. He abolished imprisonment for debt, giving power to
creditors over the goods and not the persons--or, as an ingenious
scholar has phrased it, the bona and not the bones--of their debtors.
[Illustration: Debtor and Creditor.--Seizure of Goods for a Debt.]
Servius found that while he was raising up buildings he was knocking
down a great deal of money; but being nevertheless anxious to erect a
temple to Diana on the Aventine Hill he persuaded the Latins, who had
made the place a sort of _quartier Latin_, to subscribe to it. The
Latins, the Romans, and the Sabines, were every year to celebrate a sort
of union sacrifice on this spot, where the cutting up and cooking of
oxen formed what may be termed a joint festival. It happened that a
Sabine agriculturist had reared a prize heifer, which caused quite an
effervescence among his neighbours, and taking the bull quietly by the
horns, he asked the augur what it would be meet for him to do with it.
The soothsayer looked at the bull, who turned his brilliant bull's eye
upon the astonished sage, with a sort of supercilious stare that almost
amounted to a glaring oversight. The augur, not liking the look of the
animal, and anxious, no doubt, to put an end to the interview, declared
that whoever sacrificed the beast to Diana, off-hand, would benefit his
race, and cause his nation to rule over the other confederates. The
animal was led away with a shambling gait to the sacred shambles, where
the Roman priest was waiting to set his hand to any Bull that might be
presented to him. Seeing the Sabine preparing to act as slaughterman,
the pontiff became tiffy, and suggested, that if the other was going to
do the job, he might as well do it with clean hands, upon which the
Sabine rushed to the river to take a finger bath. While the owner was
occupied about his hands the Roman priest took advantage of the pause to
slaughter the animal, and, on his return, the Sabine found that he had
unintentionally washed his hands of the business altogether. The oracle
was thus fulfilled in favour of the Romans, who trumpeted the fact
through the bull's horns, which were hung up in front of the temple in
memory of this successful piece of priest-craft.
The growing popularity of Servius with the plebs made the patricians
anxious to get rid of him, for they had not the sense to feel that if
they aspired to be the pillars of the state, a close union with the
class beneath, or, as they would have contemptuously termed it, the
base, was indispensable. It happened that Servius, in the hope of
propitiating the two sons of Tarquinius, had given them his two
daughters as their wives, though it was a grievous mistake to suppose
that family marriages are usually productive of family union. Jealousy
and quarrelling ensued, which ended in the elder, Tullia, persuading her
sister's husband Lucius Tarquinius to murder his own brother and his own
wife, in order that he might make a match with the lump of female
brimstone that had inflamed his brutal passions. Not satisfied with the
double murder, which would have qualified her new husband to be struck
in the hardest wax and to occupy chambers among the worst of horrors,
Tullia was always whispering into his ear that she wished her father
farther, and by this demoniac spell she worked on the weak and wicked
mind of Lucius Tarquinius. It having been reported that Servius Tullus
intended to crown his own reign by uncrowning himself, and exchanging,
as it were, the royal stock for consuls, the patricians thought it would
be a good opportunity to speculate for a fall, by attempting the king's
overthrow. Tullia and her husband were asked to join in this conspiracy,
when it was found that the wretched and corrupt pair would be quite ripe
for any enormity. It was arranged, therefore, that Lucius Tarquinius, at
a meeting of the Senate, should go down to the House with all the
insignia of royalty, and, having seated himself upon the throne, the
trumpeters in attendance were, by one vigorous blow, to proclaim him as
the sovereign. When Servius heard the news he proceeded to the Assembly,
where all things--including the trumpets--seemed to be flourishing in
favour of the traitor. As the sound of the instruments fell upon the old
king's ears, he seemed to tremble for a moment before the rude blast
which threatened the blasting of all his benevolent views, but calling
out from the doorway in which he stood, he rebuked the insolence and
treachery of his son-in-law. A disgraceful scene ensued, in which other
blows than those of the trumpeters were exchanged, and Servius, who had
in vain desired the traitor to "come off the throne," was executing a
threat to "pull him off" as well as the old man's strength, or rather,
his feebleness, would allow him. The senators were watching the scene
with the vulgar interest attaching to a prize fight, and were no doubt
backing up the combatants with the ordinary expressions of
encouragement, which we can only interpret by our own familiar phrases
of, "Go it," "Now then young 'un," "Bravo old 'un," and "Give it him."
Getting rather too near the edge of the throne, but holding each other
firmly in their respective grasps, the two combatants rolled together
down the steps of the throne--an incident not to be met with in the
rolls of any other Parliament. Getting immediately on to their legs they
again resumed their hostile footing, when Tarquinius being younger and
fresher than his antagonist, seized up the old man, now as feeble as an
infant in arms, and carried his brutality to such a pitch as to pitch
him down the steps of the Senate House. Servius tried in vain to pick up
his courage, and being picked up himself, he was on his road home when
he was overtaken and murdered in a street, which got the name of _Vicus
Sceleratus_, or Rascally Row, from the disgraceful row that occurred in
it. Tullia was driving down to the House to hear the news when her
coachman pulled up at the horrid sight of the king lying in the street,
but the female fury only ordered the man to "drive on," and it is said
that she enforced her directions by flinging a footstool at his head,
though, on subjecting the story to the usual tests, we find the
footstool without a leg to stand upon. Servius Tullus had reigned
forty-four years, and his memory was cherished for centuries after his
death, his birthday being celebrated on the Nones of every month,
because he was known to have been born on some nones, but which
particular nones were unknown to any one. We have already noticed the
wall of Servius, but we must not forget the Agger, or mound, connected
with it, the value of which was equal to that of the wall itself, and,
indeed, those who give the preference to the Agger over the wall do not
much ex-aggerate. There remains to this day a great portion of the
mound, which was sixty feet high and fifty broad, skirted with flag
stones towards the outer side, and the Romans no doubt would derive more
security from laying down their flags on the outer wall than from
hanging out their banners.
The greatest work, however, of the reign of Servius was the reform of
the Constitution, which he constructed with a view to the reconciling of
the wide differences between the patricians and the plebeians, so as to
form one powerful body by making somebodies of those who had hitherto
been treated as nobodies. His first care was to divide the plebeians
into thirty tribes--a name derived from the word _tribus_, or three, and
applied to the three plebeian tribes--the derivation being so simple
that were we to ask any schoolboy if he understood it, his answer would
be, that "he might be whipped" and he would assuredly deserve to be
whipped "if he didn't." These thirty tribes were placed under an officer
called a _tribunus_, whose duty it was to keep a list of the members and
collect the _tributum_--a word, to which in the reader's ready mind, the
word tribute will at once be attributed. Besides the orders of
patricians and plebeians, whose position was determined by descent
alone, Servius thought there were many who might be connected together
by a tie proper to them all, namely, that of property. He accordingly
established a census to be held every five years, in which the name of
every one who had come to man's estate was put down, together with the
amount of his other estate, if he was lucky enough to have any. The
whole number was divided into two heads, one of which was foot, or
_pedites_, and the other horse, or _equites_, among whom an equitable
share of rights and duties had to be distributed. The _pedites_, or
infantry, were not all on the same footing, but were subdivided into six
classes, according to the amount of their possessions, which determined
their position in the army; but even the sixth class, or those who had
no other possession than their self-possession, were not excluded from
the service. Each class was divided into seniors and juniors, the former
being men between forty-five and sixty; the latter, including all below
forty-five and above seventeen, at which early age, though frequently
not bearded themselves, they were expected to go forth and beard the
enemy. In addition to the two assemblies of the curiæ (the _comitia
curiata_) and the tribes (the _comitia tributa_), there was instituted
by Servius a great national assembly called the _comitia centuriata_,
and consisting of the whole of the centuries. Of these centuries there
were altogether one hundred and ninety-three; but, instead of every
individual member being allowed a separate vote, the suffrage was
distributed amongst classes according to their wealth or the number of
asses they possessed, a principle which the opponent of a mere property
qualification will regard as somewhat asinine. By this arrangement the
poor were practically excluded from voting at all, unless the rich were
disagreed among themselves, when the merely industrious classes, such as
the _Fabri_--the very extensive family of the Smiths and the
Carpenters--the _Cornicines_--the respectable race of Hornblowers--and
others of similar degree sometimes had sufficient weight to turn the
balance.
Though the equestrian centuries comprised the richest class, they seem
to have been in one respect little better than beggars on horseback, for
each eques received from the treasury a sum for the purchase of his
horse and an annual grant for its maintenance. The amount was levied
upon orphans and widows, who were, it is true, exempt from other
imposts, though their contributing from their slender means to keep a
horse on its legs caused many to complain that the law rode rough-shod
over them. The Assembly of the Centuries was a grand step towards
self-government, and, though many may think that wealth had an actual
preponderance, it was always possible for a member of a lower class to
get into a higher, and thus an inducement to self-advancement was
secured, which is, certainly, not one of the least useful ends of
government. There were numerous instances of energetic Romans rising
from century to century with a rapidity showing that they were greatly
in advance of the age, or, at all events, of the century in which they
were originally placed by their lot, or rather by their little.
Servius introduced into Rome the Etruscan As, of the value of which we
can give no nearer notion than by stating the fact that a Roman sheep
was worth about ten Etruscan asses. To the poorer classes these coins
could have been of little service, and by way of small change they were
permitted to use shells, from which we no doubt get the phrase of
"shelling out," a quaint expression sometimes used to describe the
process of paying. In some parts of the world shells are still current
as cash, and even among ourselves fish are employed at cards as the
representatives of money. Though in ordinary use for the smaller
purposes of commerce, shells were not receivable as taxes, for when the
Government required the sinews of war it would not have been satisfied
with mussels or any other similar substitute.
The Roman As was of bronze and stamped on one side with a portrait of
Janus, whose two heads we never thought much better than one, though
they appeared appropriately on a coin as a sign, perhaps, that people
are often made doublefaced by money. On the other side was the prow of a
ship, which might be emblematical of the fact that money is necessary to
keep one above water.
In the time of Servius all were expected to arm themselves according to
their means, and the richest were thoroughly clad in bronze for the
protection of their persons, while the poorer, who could not afford
anything of the kind, were obliged to trust for their self-defence to
their own natural metal. The patricians carried a clypeus, or shield, of
such dimensions as to cover frequently the whole body, and by hiding
himself behind it the wearer often escaped a hiding from the enemy. The
material of which the clypeus was composed was wood covered with a
bull's skin that had been so thoroughly tanned as to afford safety
against the severest leathering.
[Illustration: _Tarquinus Superbus makes himself King._]
CHAPTER THE FOURTH.
FROM THE ACCESSION OF TARQUINIUS SUPERBUS TO THE BANISHMENT OF THE ROYAL
FAMILY, AND THE ABOLITION OF THE KINGLY DIGNITY.
[Illustration]
Tarquinius had ascended the throne more by the force of his fists, than
by the strength of his arms; for he had aimed a blow, not only at the
crown, but at the face of the unhappy sovereign who had preceded him.
Carrying his hostility beyond the grave, Tarquinius refused to bury his
animosity, or to grant his victim a funeral. The upstart nature of the
new king gained for him the nickname of Superbus, or the proud, though
he had as little to be proud of as some of the most contemptible
characters in history. He, however, asserted himself with so much
audacity, that the people were completely overawed by his pretensions,
and many made away with themselves, to insure their lives, by a sort of
Irish policy, against Tarquin's violence. He took away the privileges of
the plebeians, and sent many to the scaffold, by employing them as
common bricklayers; but there were several who preferred laying violent
hands on themselves, to laying a single brick of the magnificent
buildings which he planned, in the hope, perhaps, that the splendour of
the constructions of his reign would induce posterity to place the best
construction on his character.
He coolly assumed the whole administration of the law, and added the
office of executioner to that of judge, while he combined with both the
character of a criminal, by seizing the property of all those whom he
punished, and thus adding robbery to violence. To prevent the
possibility of a majority against him in the Senate, he cut off several
of the heads of that body; and though he never condescended to submit
to the Assembly a single question, he treated the unhappy members as if
they had much to answer for.
Finding the continued ill-treatment of his own people getting rather
monotonous, he sought the pleasures of variety, by harassing the
Volscians, whom he robbed of a sufficient sum to enable him to commence
a temple to Jupiter. Bricks and mortar soon ran up above the estimated
cost; and Tarquin had scarcely built the lower floor, when he came to
the old story of shortness of funds, which he supplied by making the
people pay as well as work, and taxing at once their time and their
pockets. This temple was on the Capitoline Hill; and it is said that in
digging the foundations the workmen hit upon a freshly-bleeding human
head, which, of course, must be regarded as an idle tale; nor would it
be right for history to hold an elaborate inquest on this head, since it
would be impossible to find a verdict without having first found the
body. The augur, who, according to the legend, was present on the
occasion, is reported to have made a _post-mortem_ examination of the
head, which he identified as that of one Tolus; but who Tolus was, or
whether he ever was at all, we are told nothing on any competent
authority. The augur, whose duty it was to be ready to interpret
anything that turned up, no sooner saw the head, than putting upon it
the best face he could, he declared it to be a sign that Rome was
destined to be the head of the world--an obvious piece of fulsome
adulation, worthy of being offered to the flattest of flats, by one
disposed to flatter. The temple itself was a great fact, notwithstanding
the numerous fictions that are told concerning it; and there is little
doubt that though, as some say, Tarquinius Priscus (the old one) may
have begun it, Tarquinius Superbus put to it the finishing touch, and
surmounted it with a chariot and four in baked clay, which, had it been
preserved to this day, would have been one of the most interesting of
Potter's Antiquities.
[Illustration: Tarquinius Superbus has the Sibylline Books valued.]