T A R Q
U I N
‘The curtained sleep. Witchcraft
celebrates
Pale Hecate’s offerings; and withered Murder,
Alarumed by this sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl’s watch, thus with his stealthy
pace,
With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards
his design’
Macbeth, Macbeth
Ardea belonged to the Rutuli, who
were a nation of commanding wealth, for that place and period. This very
fact was the cause of the war, since the Roman king was eager not only
to enrich himself, impoverished as he was by the splendour of his public
works, but also to appease with booty the feeling of the common people;
who, besides the enmity they bore the monarch for other acts of pride,
were especially resentful that the king should have kept them employed
so long as artisans and doing the work of slaves.
An attempt was made to capture
Ardea by assault. Having failed in this, the Romans invested the place
with intrenchments, and began to beleaguer the enemy. Here in their permanent
camp, as is usual with a war not sharp but long drawn out, furlough was
rather freely granted, more freely however to the leaders than to the soldiers;
the young princes for their part passed their idle hours together at dinners
and drinking bouts. It chanced, as they were drinking in the quarters of
Sextus Tarquinius, where Tarquinius Collatinus, son of Egerius, was also
a guest, that the subject of wives came up. Every man fell to praising
his own wife with enthusiasm, and, as their rivalry grew hot, Collatinus
said that there was no need to talk about it, for it was in their power
to know, in a few hours' time, how far the rest were excelled by his own
Lucretia."Come! If the vigour of youth is in us let us mount our horses
and see for ourselves the disposition of our wives. Let every man regard
as the surest test what meets his eyes when the woman's husband enters
unexpected." They were heated with wine. "Agreed!" they all cried, and
clapping spurs to their borses were off for Rome.
Arriving there at early dusk,
they thence proceeded to Collatia, where Lucretia was discovered very differently
employed from the daughters-in-law of the king. These they had seen at
a luxurious banquet, whiling awav the time with their young friends—but
Lucretia, though it was late at night, was busily engaged upon her wool,
while her maidens toiled about her in the lamplight as she sat in the hall
of her house. Tbe prize of this contest in womanly virtues fell to Lueretia.
As Collatinus and the Tarquinii approached, they were graciously received,
and the victorious husband courteously invited the young princes to his
table.
It was there that Sextus Tarquinius
was seized with a wicked desire to debauch Lucretia by force; not only
her beauty, but her proved chastity as well provoked him. However, for
the present they ended the boyish prank of the night and returned to the
camp.
When a few days had gone by,
Sextus Tarquinius, without letting Collatinus know, took a single attendant
and went to Collatia. Being kindly welcomed, for no one suspected his purpose,
he was brought after dinner to a guest-chamber. Burning with passion, he
waited until it seemed to him that all about him was secure and everybody
fast asleep; then, drawing his sword, he came to the sleeping Lucretia.
Holding the woman down with his left hand on her breast, he said, "Be still,
Lucretia! I am Sextus Tarquinius. My sword is in my hand. Utter a sound,
and you die!"
In fear the woman started out
of her sleep. No help was in sight, but only imminent death. Then Tarquinius
began to declare his love, to plead, to mingle threats witll prayers, to
bring every resource to bear upon her woman's heart. When he found her
obdurate and not to be moved even by fear of death, he went farther and
threatened her with disgrace, saying that when she was dead he would kill
his slave and lay him naked by her side, that she might be said to have
been put to death in adultery with a man of base condition. At this dreadful
prospect her resolute modesty was overcome, as if with force, by his victorious
lust; and Tarquinius departed, exulting in his conquest of a woman's honour.
Lucretia, grieving at her great
disaster, dispatched the same message to her father in Rome and to her
husband at Ardea: she asked that they should each take a trusty friend
and come, that they must do this and do it quickly, for a frightful thing
had appened. Spurius Lucretius came with Publius Valerius, Volesus' son.
Collatinus brought Lucius Junius Brutus, with whom he chanced to be returning
to Rome when he was met by the messenger from his wife. They found Lucretia
sitting sadly in her chamber. The entrance of her friends brought the tears
to her eyes, and to her husband's question, "Is all well?," she replied,
"Far from it; for what can be well with a woman when she has lost her honour?
The print of a strange man, Collatinus, is in your bed. Yet
my body only has been violated; my heart is guiltless, as death shall be
my witness. But pledge your right hands and your words that the adulterer
shall not go unpunished.
Sextus Tarquinius is he that
last night returned hostility for hospitality, and brought ruin on me,
and on himself no less—if you are men—when he worked his pleasure with
me." They give their pledges, every man in turn. They seek to comfort her,
sick at heart as she is, by diverting the blame from her who was forced
to the doer of the wrong. They tell her it is the mind that sins, not the
body; and that where purpose has been wanting there is no guilt.
"It is for you to determine,"
she answers, "what is due to him, for my own part, though I acquit myself
of the sin, I do not absolve myself from punishment; nor in time to come
shall ever unchaste woman live through the example of Lucretia."
Taking a knife which she had
concealed beneath her dress, she plunged it into her heart, and sinking
forward upon the wound, died as she fell. The wail for the dead was raised
by her husband and her father.
Brutus, while the others were
absorbed in grief; drew out the knife from Lucretia's wound, and holding
it up, dripping with gore, exclaimed, "By this blood, most chaste until
a prince wronged it, I swear, and I take you, gods, to witness, that I
will pursue Lucius Tarquinius Superbus and his wicked wife and all his
children, with sword, with fire, aye with whatsoever violence I may; and
that I will suffer neither them nor any other to be king in Rome!"
The knife he then passed to
Collatinus, and from him to Lucretius and Valerius. They were dumbfounded
at this miracle. Whence came this new spirit in the breast of Brutus? As
he bade them, so they swore. Grief was swallowed up in anger; and when
Brutus summoned them to make war from that very moment on the power of
the kings, they followed his lead. They carried out Lucretia's corpse
from the house and bore it to the market-place, where men crowded about
them, attracted, as they.were bound to be, by the amazing character of
the strange event and its heinousness. Every man had his own complaint
to make of the prince's crime and his violence. They were moved, not only
by the father's sorrow, but by the fact that it was Brutus who chid their
tears and idle lamentations and urged them to take up the sword, as befitted
men and Romans, against those who had dared to treat them as enemies. "The
boldest of the young men seized their weapons and offered themselves for
service, and the others followed their example. Then, leaving Lucretia's
father to guard Collatia, and posting sentinels so that no one might announce
the rising to the royal family, the rest, equipped for battle and with
Brutus in command, set out for Rome. Once there, wherever their armed band
advanced it brought terror and confusion; but again, when people saw that
in the van were the chief men of the state, they concluded that whatever
it was it could be no meaningless disturbance. And in fact there was no
less resentment at Rome when this dreadful story was known than there had
been at Collatia. So from every quarter of the city men came running to
the Forum.
No sooner were they there than
a crier summoned the people before the Tribune of the Celeres, which office
Brutus the happened to be holding. There he made a speech by no means like
what might have been expected of the mind and the spirit which he had feigned
up to that day. He spoke of the violence and lust of Sextus Tarquinius,
of the shameful defilement of Lucretia and her deplorable death, of the
bereavement of Tricipitinus, in whose eyes the death of his daughter was
not so outrageous and deplorable as was the cause of her death. He reminded
them, besides, of the pride of the king himself and the wretched state
of the commons, who were plunged into ditches and sewers and made to clear
them out. The men of Rome, he said, the conquerors of all the nations round
about, had been transformed from warriors into artisans and stone-cutters.
He spoke of the shameful murder of King Tullius, and how his daughter had
driven her accursed chariot over her father's body, and he invoked the
gods who punish crimes against parents.
With these and, I fancy, even
fiercer reproaches, such as occur to a man in the very presence of an outrage,
but are far from easy for an historian to reproduce, he inflamed the people,
and brought them to abrogate the king s authority and to exile Lucius Tarquinius,
together with his wife and children. Brutus himself then enrolled the juniors,
who voluntarily gave in their names, and arming them set out for the camp
at Ardea to arouse the troops against the king. The command at Rome he
left with Lucretius, who had been appointed Prefect of the City by the
king, some time before. During this confusion Tullia fled from her house,
cursed wherever she went by men and women, who called down upon her the
furies that avenge the wrongs of kindred.
When the news of these
events reached the camp, the king, in alarm at the unexpected danger, set
out for Rome to put down the revolt. Brutus, who had perceived the king's
approach, made a circuit to avoid meeting him, and at almost the same moment,
though by different roads, Brutus reached Ardea and Tarquinius Rome. Against
Tarquinius the gates were closed and exile was pronounced. The liberator
of the City was received with rejoicings in the camp, and the sons of the
king were driven out of it. Two of them followed their father, and went
into exile at Caere, in Etruria. Sextus Tarquinius departed for Gabii,
as though it had been his own kingdom, and there the revengers of old quarrels,
which he had brought upon himself by murder and rapine, slew him.
Lucius Tarquinius Superbus
ruled for five and twenty years. The rule of the kings at Rome, from its
foundation to its liberation, lasted two hundred and forty-four years.
Two consuls were then chosen in the centuriate comitia, under the presidency
of the Prefect of the City, in accordance with the commentaries of Servius
Tullius. These were Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus.
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