B.C. 510.] EXPULSION OF THE TARQUINS. 213 cent herself, she could not survive her shame, she seized a knife that she had hidden beneath her pillow, and plunged it in her heart. While her husband and her father could only utter cries of horror, Brutus, throwing off his assumed stupidity, drew the knife from the wound, and holding it aloft, swore by the blood of Lucretia that he would pursue to the uttermost, with fire and sword, both Tarquin and his accursed house, and that no man. should ever after be king in Rome to repeat such crimes. Then he passed the knife to Collatinus, and then to Lucretius and Valerius, and bound them by the same oath. The corpse of Lucretia was carried forth into the market place, and Brutus, holding up the bloody knife before the people, who flocked together at the strange sight, exclaimed, "Behold the deeds of the wicked house of Tarquin." The youth of Collatia flew to arms, and while one body guarded the gates, lest news of the rising should reach Tarquin's camp, the rest followed Brutus and his companions to Rome. The sight of the armed band, with their distinguished leaders, spread an alarm through the city, and the cause of their coming was soon known. In virtue of his office as Tribune of the Celeres,* Brutus summoned the people to the Forum, and harangued them, not only on the wrongs of Lucretia, and the misery of her husband and her father, but on all the misdeeds and tyranny of Tarquin's reign. The Curiæ, for it was in that form that the people were convened, passed a solemn vote depriving Tarquin of the crown, which he had seized at first without their consent, and banishing him and all his family for ever. Tullia fled from her palace amidst the tumult, pursued by the curses of the people. The city was left in the charge of its prefect, Spurius Lucretius, while Brutus went at the head of the youth to gain over the army before Ardea. Meanwhile the news of the insurrection at Rome had reached the camp, and Tarquin had started for the city at the head of a chosen band. Brutus turned aside from the main road, and reached the army without encountering the king. His harangue was responded to in the same spirit as in the city. The sons of Tarquin were driven out; a truce was made with the Ardeans; and the army marched to Rome, where the gates had already been The Tribunus Celerum, or captain of the knights, was the officer who called together the Curiæ, in the absence of the king. The entrusting such an office to a reputed idiot is but one of the many inconsistencies of the legend. Some suppose that Brutus originally signified no more than "grave" or "stern," like the later name Severus, and that the story of his assumed idiocy arose from the later sense of the word. Such inventions based on etymology are by no means infrequent. shut against the deposed king. Tarquin fled to Care in Etruria, where the tomb of the family is still to be seen. There he was joined by his sons Titus and Aruns. Sextus fled to Gabii, where he was murdered in requital of his former treachery.* Thus was Tarquinius Superbus driven out from Rome, with all his family, in the twenty-fifth year of his reign, just at the close of the Roman year B.C. 510-9.† The expulsion of the last king was commemorated by the festival called Regifugium, or Fugalia, which was celebrated on the 24th of February in every year. We have felt bound to relate those poetical legends which are inseparably associated with this most picturesque period of Roman history. The labours of the historians of Rome have relieved us from the necessity of exposing the absurdities of dry fact which lurk beneath scenes so true to nature. It is superfluous to demonstrate once more the impossibility of a chronology which assigns 245 years to seven elective kings, three of whom perished by a violent death, and the last was prematurely expelled. Nor is it possible, as some have thought, to draw any line, however general, between the periods of fact and fable, whether between Numa and Tullus, or between Ancus and the elder Tarquin. If the reigns of the earlier kings are the least trustworthy, from the absence of historic records and the manifestly unhistoric complexion of their annals, and if the history of the Tarquins seems more trustworthyas belonging to an age of advanced civilization and commerce, an age when written documents certainly existed, and which has handed down its monuments of art and its elaborate political constitution, yet it is at the close of this very age that the history assumes a more poetical complexion than ever, and it preserves that complexion during the establishment of the republic. The poetic fervour, in which the sense of new-born freedom or the regret for its subsequent loss found vent, though not of itself inconsistent with a substratum of true facts, effectually prevents our discerning those facts through the haze of imagination that is cast around them. There is as great a variety in the legendary stories which different writers tell of this period as in the age of Romulus and Numa; and the chronology, in becoming the more * This is the account of Livy, who generally preserves the more poetical form of the several legends. Dionysius represents Sextus as killed at the battle of the lake Regillus, and this view is followed in Macaulay's celebrated lay. + According to our present calendar, the expulsion of the Tarquins was on Feb. 24, B.C. 509; but, for the sake of the round number and of the agreement with the Roman year, we take the liberty of reckoning on the year 510 to its Roman end, which agrees also with our own "old style." B.C. 510.] REVIEW OF REGAL ROME. 215 definite, only becomes the more impossible. This was indeed perceived by Dionysius of Halicarnassus; but, instead of admitting the conclusion, he makes arbitrary amendments in the data. We cannot make out a true and consistent history by eliminating the improbabilities of these legends, or by selecting from the interpretations of the ancients that which may seem to us the most reasonable. But, by a careful comparison of language, antiquities, institutions, traditions, and other real elements of fact, illustrated by light reflected on them by the legends, we can arrive at certain broad conclusions. The chief of these have been indicated as we have proceeded. They may be summed up in the steady growth of the city, till it became the head of Latium, on the one hand, and derived wealth and commercial importance from its connection with Etruria on the other. A constitution, based on a patriarchal aristocracy, with an elective monarchy at its head, was modified by the introduction of new elements, chiefly from the conquered Latin states, till the necessity arose for a new military organization and a new distribution of political power among all classes of the citizens. But, as we have already seen in the states of Greece, the first confusion incident to the admission of the commons to a share of power, gave an opportunity for the establishment of despotism; and the excesses of this despotism led to its speedy overthrow. But here was the great difference between the fall of the Greek tyrants and the Roman kings. The former were mere usurpers; the latter were the natural leaders of the people, who had indeed abused their power for a time, but whose loss left an injurious void in the constitution. The immediate effect of their expulsion on the common people cannot be better described than in the words of Mr. Newman :-"The great cause of the prosperity of the city, was that the kings had headed the movement party for enfranchising and elevating the lower classes. . . Upon the destruction of royalty, the lower population discovered that they had lost their patron, and were exposed to hundreds of tyrants. All the early history of the Roman republic is a long struggle of the commonalty to regain for itself a powerful protector: and, after a time, the success of the plebeians was complete. But Rome continued to conquer; hence, outside of the plebeians fresh and fresh masses of subjects lay, who had no organs of protection, until the Roman * See the complete summary of these chronological absurdities-which are manifest especially in the ages of the leading persons of the story-in Professor Malden's History of Rome, pp. 56, 57. constitution was violently subverted, and emperors arose. From these, at length, the population of the provinces gradually obtained the gift of Roman citizenship, which ought to have been long before granted by free Rome, in order to preserve her own freedom. It was conquest that ruined the later republic; and conquest, apparently, also that ruined royal Rome. When the victories of Ancus and Tarquin enlarged the state so rapidly, not to have enfranchised the new subjects would have weakened it from within; yet by enfranchising them, Tarquin and Servius produced a discontent in the old citizens, which exploded into violence, and wrecked the constitution under Tarquin the Proud. If Brutus and Collatinus, instead of abolishing the royalty, had restored it with all the formalities of interregal election, but with such limitations as experience suggested, we now see that it would have been far better for the plebeians of Rome. The wicked deed of Sextus Tarquinius did not need royal power; it might have been perpetrated by any man who wore a sword. But it was attributed to the inherent haughtiness of royal blood, and the question of raising some one else to the throne was never even moved at all. In consequence, the plebeians were suddenly left without legal representatives. No man of their body was capable of holding office, because he was essentially inadmissible to patrician religion. It was soon manifested that, while excluded from executive government, possession of legislative power was a mockery: unfortunate war forced them to incur debt, and the penalties of debt were rigorously enforced. Art and skill migrated from Rome when her arms could no longer defend the industrious, and rudeness so great came over the city of the Tarquins, that sheep and oxen became the current coin of a community which, but a little before, had made a treaty of commerce with Carthage. Under an exclusive patrician caste, Rome sank more rapidly than she had risen; until tyrannical powers, vested in tumultuous tribunes, became an alleviation of the intolerable evils caused by the loss of the elective king. For the destruction of the monarchy did not come in the ripeness of time, when monarchy had finished its work, and the lower people had gained the power of self-defence. It was the explosion of rage against an institution because of personal iniquity; and it became the prelude to a century and a half of suffering to the plebeians." * Newman's Regal Rome, pp. 169-171. B.C. 509.] BEGINNING OF THE REPUBLIC. 217 CHAPTER XXI. THE PATRICIAN REPUBLIC-FROM THE EXPULSION OF THE TARQUINS TO THE INVASION OF THE GAULS. B.C. 509 TO B.C. 390. "Then the great Consuls venerable rise: He, whom his thankless country could not lose, Camillus, only vengeful to her foes; Fabricius, scorner of all-conquering gold; And Cincinnatus, awful from the plough."-THOMSON. BEGINNING OF THE REPUBLIC-INSTITUTION OF THE CONSULATE-BRUTUS AND COLLATINUS CONSULS-RETIREMENT OF COLLATINUS-CONSPIRACY FOR THE TARQUINS-BRUTUS AND HIS SONS-DEATH OF BRUTUS-VALERIUS POPLICOLA-RIGHT OF APPEAL-TREATY WITH CARTHAGE-DEDICATION OF THE CAPITOL-LEGEND OF LARS PORSENNA-BATTLE OF THE LAKE REGILLUS-SABINE WAR-IMMIGRATION OF THE CLAUDII-END OF THE MYTHICAL PERIOD OF ROMAN HISTORY-REAL STATE OF ROME-CONQUEST BY PORSENNA-REPULSE OF THE ETRUSCANS-INDEPENDENCE OF LATIUM-INSTITUTION OF THE DICTATORSHIP--THE SENATE-RISE OF A NEW NOBILITY-THE CONSTITUTION ARISTOCRATIC-POSITION OF THE PLEBEIANS-DISTRESS OF THE SMALL LANDHOLDERS -CONSULSHIP OF CLAUDIUS AND SERVILIUS-M. VALERIUS DICTATOR-SECESSION TO THE SACRED MOUNT-TRIBUNES OF THE PLEBS AND PLEBEIAN EDILES-COLONY SENT TO VELITRE-CONTINUED DISSENSIONS-LEGEND OF CORIOLANUS-SPURIUS CASSIUSTREATIES WITH THE LATINS AND HERNICANS-WARS WITH THE VOLSCIANS AND EQUIANS-AGRARIAN LAW OF SPURIUS CASSIUS HIS DEATH-WARS WITH THE ETRUSCANS-LEGEND OF THE FABII AT THE CREMERA-IMPEACHMENT OF CONSULSMURDER OF THE TRIBUNE GENUCIUS PUBLILIAN LAW-IMPEACHMENT OF APPIUS CLAUDIUS-ROGATION OF TERENTILIUS-LONG CONFLICT OF THE ORDERS-EQUIAN AND VOLSCIAN WARS-STORY OF CINCINNATUS-THE DECEMVIRS-LAWS OF THE TWELVE TABLES-STORY OF VIRGINIA--SECOND SECESSION OF THE PLEBS-FALL OF THE DECEMVIRS-VALERIAN AND HORATIAN LAWS-MILITARY TRIBUNES IN PLACE OF CONSULS-INSTITUTION OF THE CENSORSHIP FAMINE AT ROME-DEATH OF MELIUSWAR WITH THE ETRUSCANS, EQUIANS, AND VOLSCIANS-VICTORY AT MOUNT ALGIDUS -RISE OF THE SAMNITES-FALL OF FIDENE-LAST WAR WITH YEII-DRAINING OF THE ALBAN LAKE-LEGEND OF CAMILLUS AND THE FALL OF VEII-AGRARIAN LAWBANISHMENT OF CAMILLUS-THE GAULS IN ETRURIA-DECLINE OF THE ETRUSCANS. ROME was delivered from the tyrant and his house. The Patricians lifted their heads once more: the lower orders rejoiced in the cessation of their forced burthens. The common sense of freedom disposed both orders to co-operate in the restoration of order; and a common basis was furnished in the revival of the Comitia Centuriata. The forms of the constitution were scrupulously observed. Though the royal family had been expelled, and the name of king abolished, the first step taken was to fill up the place thus left vacant at the head of the state by the intervention of an Interrex, as of old: Spurius Lucretius was appointed to this function, either in virtue of his office as warden of the city, |