The Comic History of Rome. À Beckett Gilbert Abbott
his eyes; but his wife was so completely carried away with it, that she declared the circumstance told her he would gain a crown, though it really proved how nearly he had lost one; for until the bird replaced his hat upon his head, there was only a bare possibility of his getting it back again.
The wealth of his wife enabled Lucumo to live in the first style of fashion; and having been admitted to the rights of citizenship, he changed his name to Lucius Tarquinius: for the sake, perhaps, of the sound, in the absence of any sounder reason. He was introduced at Court, where he won the favour of Ancus, who was so much taken by his dashing exterior, that he gave him a commission in the army, as Tribunus Celerum, a sort of Captain of the Guards, who, from the title of Celeres, appear to have been, as we have before observed, the fast men, as opposed to the "slow coaches" of the period.
The Captain made himself so generally useful to Ancus, that when the latter died, his two sons were left to the guardianship of the former, who, on the day fixed for the election of a new king, sent his wards to the chase, that they might be pursuing other game, instead of looking after the Crown, which Tarquinius had set his own eye upon. In the absence of the youths, Tarquinius, who had got the name of Priscus, or the old hand, which he seems to have well deserved, proposed himself as a candidate; and, in a capital electioneering speech, put forth his own merits with such success, that he was voted on to the throne without opposition.
The commencement of his reign was not very peaceful, for he was attacked by the Latins; but he gave them a very severe Latin lesson, and, crushing them under his feet, sent them back to that part of Italy forming the lower part of the boot, with the loss of considerable booty. He, nevertheless, found time for all manner of games; and he instituted the Ludi Magni, which were great sport, in a space he marked out as the Circus Maximus.
The position of the Circus was between the Palatine and Aventine Hills, there being a slope on either side, so that the people followed the inclination of nature as well as their own in selecting the spot for spectacular purposes. In the earliest times a Circus was formed of materials brought by the spectators themselves, who raised temporary scaffolds, from which an unfortunate drop, causing fearful execution among the crowd, would frequently happen. Tarquinius Priscus, desirous of giving more permanent accommodation to the Roman sight seers, built a Circus capable of containing 150,000 persons, and, from its vast superiority in size over other similar buildings, it obtained the distinction of Maximus. The sports of the Circus were extremely attractive to the Romans, who looked to the libelli, containing the lists of the horses, and names and colours of the drivers, with all the eagerness of a "gentleman sportsman" seeking information from Dorling's correct card at Epsom. In the early days of Rome the amusements of the Circus were limited to the comparatively harmless contests of equestrian speed; and it was not until the city had reached a high state of refinement – cruelty having become refined like everything else – that animals were killed by thousands, and human beings by hundreds at a time, to glut the sanguinary appetites of the prince and the people. The ancient Circus was circular at one end only, and the line of seats was broken by a sort of outwork, supposed to have comprised the box and retiring-room of the sovereign; while, at the opposite side, was another deviation from the line of seats, to form a place for the editor spectaculorum– a box for the manager. Though Tarquinius is said to have founded the Circus Maximus in commemoration of his victory over the Latins, they were not the only foes whom he might have boasted of vanquishing.
Having fought and conquered the Sabines, he took from them Collatræ, as a collateral security for their good behaviour; and coming home with a great deal of money, he built the Temple of Jupiter on the capitol.
Tarquinius, being desirous of increasing the army, was opposed by a celebrated augur of the day, one Attus Navius, whose reputation seems to have been well deserved, if the annexed anecdote is to be believed; for it indicates that he could see further into a whetstone than any one who has either gone before or followed him. Navius declared that augury must determine whether the plan of Tarquinius could be carried out, which caused the latter to ask, sneeringly, whether he knew what he was thinking about. The question was ambiguous, but Navius boldly replied he did, and added, that what Tarquinius proposed to do was perfectly possible. "Is it indeed," said the King, "I was thinking of cutting through this whetstone with this razor." "It will be a close shave," was the reply of the augur, "but it can be done, so cut away;" and the bluntness of the observation was only equalled by the sharpness of the blade, which cut the article in two as easily as if it had been a pound of butter, instead of a stone of granite. This reproof was literally more cutting than any other that could have been possibly conveyed to the king, who ever afterwards paid the utmost respect to the augurs, of whom he was accustomed thenceforth to say, that the affair of the whetstone proved them to be much sharper blades than he had been willing to take them for.
Having been at war with the Tuscans, whom he vanquished, he was admitted into the ranks of the Kings of Etruria; a position which led him to indulge in the most extravagant desires. He must needs have a crown of gold, which often tears or encumbers the brow it adorns; a throne of ivory, on whose too highly polished surface the foot is apt to slip; and a sceptre, having on its top an eagle, which frequently gives wings to the power it is intended to typify. His robe was of purple, with so costly an edging, that the border exceeded all reasonable limits, and furnished an instance of extravagance carried to the extreme, while the rate at which he went on may be judged from the fact of his always driving four in hand in his chariot. He did not, however, wholly neglect the useful in his taste for the ornamental; and though his extravagance must have been a drain upon the public pocket, he devoted himself to the more honourable drainage of the lower portions of the city. He set an example to all future commissioners of sewers, by his great work of the Cloaca Maxima, some portion of which still exists, and which contains, in its spacious vault, a far more honourable monument than the most magnificent tomb that could have been raised to his memory.
Tarquinius had reigned about thirty-eight years, when the sons of Ancus Martius, who had been from the first brooding over their own ejection from the throne, carried their brooding so far as to hatch a conspiracy, which, though regarded by the best authorities as a mare's nest, forms one of those "lays" of ancient Rome which tradition gives as part of her history. The youths, expecting that Tarquinius would secure the succession to a favourite, named Servius Tullius, made an arrangement with a couple of shepherds, who, pretending to have a quarrel, went with hatchets in their hands to the king, and requested him to settle their little difference. Tarquinius seems to have been in a most accommodating humour, for he is said to have stepped to the door of the palace, to arbitrate between these most un-gentle shepherds, who, pretending that they only came with their hatchets to axe his advice, began to axe him about the head; and while he was endeavouring to act as an arbitrator, they, acting as still greater traitors, cruelly made away with him. The lictors who stood by must have had their faces and their fasces turned the wrong way, for they administered a beating to the shepherds when, too late, after the regal crown was already cracked beyond the possibility of repair, and the king was almost knocked to pieces before he had time to collect himself.
Tarquinius was a practical reformer, and rested his fame on the most durable foundations, among which the still-existing remains of the Cloaca Maxima, or largest common sewer, have already been noticed. Those who are over nice might feel repugnant to come down to posterity by such a channel; but that country is fortunate indeed in which genius seeks "the bubble reputation" at the mouth of the sewer, instead of in the mouth of the cannon.
It must be recorded, to the honour of Tarquinius, that he organised the plebeians, and elevated some of them to the rank of patricians, thus giving vigour to the aristocratic body, which runs the risk of becoming corrupt, and losing its vitality, unless a supply of plebeian life-blood is from time to time poured into it.
This measure would have been followed by other wholesome reforms, but for the short-sighted and selfish policy of the patricians themselves, who could not perceive the fact, full of apparent paradoxes, that if anything is to remain, it must not stand still; that no station can be stationary with safety to itself; and that nothing possessed of vitality can grow old without something new being continually added.
The sixth king of Rome was Servius Tullius, who is said to have been the son of a female in the establishment of Tanaquil. His mother's name was Ocrisia; but there is something vague about the paternity of the