1.48
Servius had been summoned
by a breathless messenger, and arrived on the scene
while Tarquin was speaking. As soon as he reached
the vestibule, he exclaimed in loud tones, "What is
the meaning of this, Tarquin? How dared you, with
such insolence, convene the senate or sit in that
chair whilst I am alive?" Tarquin replied fiercely
that he was occupying his father's seat, that a
king's son was a much more legitimate heir to the
throne than a slave, and that he, Servius, in
playing his reckless game, had insulted his masters
long enough. Shouts arose from their respective
partisans, the people made a rush to the
senate-house, and it was evident that he who won the
fight would reign. Then Tarquin, forced by sheer
necessity into proceeding to the last extremity,
seized Servius round the waist, and being a much
younger and stronger man, carried him out of the
senate-house and flung him down the steps into the
Forum below. He then returned to call the senate to
order. The officers and attendants of the king fled.
The king himself, half dead from the violence, was
put to death by those whom Tarquin had sent in
pursuit of him. It is the current belief that this
was done at Tullia's suggestion, for it is quite in
keeping with the rest of her wickedness. At all
events, it is generally agreed that she drove down
to the Forum in a two-wheeled car, and, unabashed by
the presence of the crowd, called her husband out of
the senate-house and was the first to salute him as
king. He told her to make her way out of the tumult,
and when on her return she had got as far as the top
of the Cyprius Vicus, where the temple of Diana
lately stood, and was turning to the right on the
Urbius Clivus, to get to the Esquiline, the driver
stopped horror-struck and pulled up, and pointed out
to his mistress the corpse of the murdered Servius.
Then, the tradition runs, a foul and unnatural crime
was committed, the memory of which the place still
bears, for they call it the Vicus Sceleratus. It is
said that Tullia, goaded to madness by the avenging
spirits of her sister and her husband, drove right
over her father's body, and carried back some of her
father's blood with which the car and she herself
were defiled to her own and her husband's household
gods, through whose anger a reign which began in
wickedness was soon brought to a close by a like
cause. Servius Tullius reigned forty-four years, and
even a wise and good successor would have found it
difficult to fill the throne as he had done. The
glory of his reign was all the greater because with
him perished all just and lawful kingship in Rome.
Gentle and moderate as his sway had been, he had
nevertheless, according to some authorities, formed
the intention of laying it down, because it was
vested in a single person, but this purpose of
giving freedom to the State was cut short by that
domestic crime.