Young Folks History of Rome | Page 9

the two little Tarquins.
CHAPTER V.
THE DRIVING OUT OF THE TARQUINS.
B.C. 578--309.
Servius Tullus was looked on by the Romans as having begun making
their laws, as Romulus had put their warlike affairs in order, and Numa
had settled their religion. The Romans were all in great clans or
families, all with one name, and these were classed in tribes. The nobler
ones, who could count up from old Trojan, Latin, or Sabine families,
were called Patricians--from pater, a father--because they were fathers
of the people; and the other families were called Plebeian, from plebs,
the people. The patricians formed the Senate or Council of Government,
and rode on horseback in war, while the plebeians fought on foot. They
had spears, round shields, and short pointed swords, which cut on each
side of the blade. Tullus is said to have fixed how many men of each
tribe should be called out to war. He also walled in the city again with a
wall five miles round; and he made many fixed laws, one being that
when a man was in debt his goods might be seized, but he himself
might not be made a slave. He was the great friend of the plebeians,
and first established the rule that a new law of the Senate could not be
made without the consent of the Comitia, or whole free people.
The Sabines and Romans were still striving for the mastery, and a
husbandman among the Sabines had a wonderfully beautiful cow. An
oracle declared that the man who sacrificed this cow to Diana upon the
Aventine Hill would secure the chief power to his nation. The Sabine
drove the cow to Rome, and was going to kill her, when a crafty
Roman priest told him that he must first wash his hands in the Tiber,
and while he was gone sacrificed the cow himself, and by this trick
secured the rule to Rome. The great horns of the cow were long after
shown in the temple of Diana on the Aventine, where Romans, Sabines,
and Latins every year joined in a great sacrifice.
The two daughters of Servius were married to their cousins, the two

young Tarquins. In each pair there was a fierce and a gentle one. The
fierce Tullia was the wife of the gentle Aruns Tarquin; the gentle Tulla
had married the proud Lucius Tarquin. Aruns' wife tried to persuade
her husband to seize the throne that had belonged to his father, and
when he would not listen to her, she agreed with his brother Lucius that,
while he murdered her sister, she should kill his brother, and then that
they should marry. The horrid deed was carried out, and old Servius,
seeing what a wicked pair were likely to come after him, began to
consider with the Senate whether it would not be better to have two
consuls or magistrates chosen every year than a king. This made Lucius
Tarquin the more furious, and going to the Senate, where the patricians
hated the king as the friend of the plebeians, he stood upon the throne,
and was beginning to tell the patricians that this would be the ruin of
their greatness, when Servius came in and, standing on the steps of the
doorway, ordered him to come down. Tarquin sprang on the old man
and hurled him backward, so that the fall killed him, and his body was
left in the street. The wicked Tullia, wanting to know how her husband
had sped, came out in her chariot on that road. The horses gave back
before the corpse. She asked what was in their way; the slave who
drove her told her it was the king's body. "Drive on," she said. The
horrid deed caused the street to be known ever after as "Sceleratus," or
the wicked. But it was the plebeians who mourned for Servius; the
patricians in their anger made Tarquin king, but found him a very hard
and cruel master, so that he is generally called Tarquinius Superbus, or
Tarquin the proud. In his time the Sybil of Cumæ, the same wondrous
maiden of deep wisdom who had guided Æneas to the realms of Pluto,
came, bringing nine books of prophecies of the history of Rome, and
offered them to him at a price which he thought too high, and refused.
She went away, destroyed three, and brought back the other six, asking
for them double the price of the whole. He refused. She burnt three
more, and brought him the last three with the price again doubled,
because the fewer they were, the more precious. He bought them at last,
and placed them in the Capitol, whence they were now and then taken
to be consulted as oracles.
[Illustration: SYBIL'S CAVE.]

Rome was