1.47
From that time the old
age of Tullius became more embittered, his reign
more unhappy. The woman began to look forward from
one crime to another; she allowed her husband no
rest day or night, for fear lest the past murders
should prove fruitless. What she wanted, she said,
was not a man who was only her husband in name, or
with whom she was to live in uncomplaining
servitude; the man she needed was one who deemed
himself worthy of a throne, who remembered that he
was the son of Priscus Tarquinius, who preferred to
wear a crown rather than live in hopes of it. "If
you are the man to whom I thought I was married,
then I call you my husband and my king; but if not,
I have changed my condition for the worse, since you
are not only a coward but a criminal to boot. Why do
you not prepare yourself for action? You are not,
like your father, a native of Corinth or Tarquinii,
nor is it a foreign crown you have to win. Your
father's household gods, your father's image, the
royal palace, the kingly throne within it, the very
name of Tarquin, all declare you king. If you have
not courage enough for this, why do you excite vain
hopes in the State? Why do you allow yourself to be
looked up to as a youth of kingly stock? Make your
way back to Tarquinii or Corinth, sink back to the
position whence you sprung; you have your brother's
nature rather than your father's." With taunts like
these she egged him on. She, too, was perpetually
haunted by the thought that whilst Tanaquil, a woman
of alien descent, had shown such spirit as to give
the crown to her husband and her son-in-law in
succession, she herself, though of royal descent,
had no power either in giving it or taking it away.
Infected by the woman's madness Tarquin began to go
about and interview the nobles, mainly those of the
Lesser Houses; he reminded them of the favour his
father had shown them, and asked them to prove their
gratitude; he won over the younger men with
presents. By making magnificent promises as to what
he would do, and by bringing charges against the
king, his cause became stronger amongst all ranks.
At last, when he thought the time for action
had arrived, he appeared suddenly in the Forum with
a body of armed men. A general panic ensued, during
which he seated himself in the royal chair in the
senate-house and ordered the Fathers to be summoned
by the crier "into the presence of King Tarquin."
They hastily assembled, some already prepared for
what was coming; others, apprehensive lest their
absence should arouse suspicion, and dismayed by the
extraordinary nature of the incident, were convinced
that the fate of Servius was sealed. Tarquin went
back to the king's birth, protested that he was a
slave and the son of a slave, and after his (the
speaker's) father had been foully murdered, seized
the throne, as a woman's gift, without any interrex
being appointed as heretofore, without any assembly
being convened, without any vote of the people being
taken or any confirmation of it by the Fathers. Such
was his origin, such was his right to the crown. His
sympathies were with the dregs of society from which
he had sprung, and through jealousy of the ranks to
which he did not belong, he had taken the land from
the foremost men in the State and divided it amongst
the vilest; he had shifted on to them the whole of
the burdens which had formerly been borne in common
by all; he had instituted the census that the
fortunes of the wealthy might be held up to envy,
and be an easily available source from which to
shower doles, whenever he pleased, upon the
neediest.