That Servius lost his life in a rebellion of Tarquin, and that the latter was supported by the whole body of the citizens, in particular by the Luceres, his own party (factio regis, gentes minores), so that these reaped the fruits of the revolution, and the two first tribes thought themselves hardly dealt with, may be looked upon as historical. Yet I am far from considering as such all the details which are given about the daughters of the old king: they are no more so than the tale of Lady Macbeth. There is so wide a gulf between our manners and the crimes of the South, that we have not a notion of their possibility or impossibility; yet even if those accounts were possible, historical they are not. That the rule of Tarquin the Proud was brilliant but frightfully oppressive, and that he trampled the laws of Tullius under foot, may belong to history; but those appalling massacres of his cannot but be poetry. Tarquin has perhaps the misfortune of an awful poetical celebrity, much worse than he may have deserved. Yet he cannot have entirely abolished the laws of Servius at once. There may be some truth in the statement that he put down the meetings of the plebeian tribes; that he did away with their festivals; and that he did not call them together for legislation and the election of their magistrates. Nor, in fact, was there much occasion for these last, the criminal judges being chosen by the patricians. When it is recounted, that Tarquin undertook immense works, that he built the magnificent Capitoline temple, after having arranged the site for it, it is possible that he used the plebeians as his bondmen, that many of them committed suicide on that account, and that in order to prevent this he had the corpses fastened upon a cross. We must here proceed with caution and circumspection; the details will always remain uncertain, and all that cannot be set aside as impossible, is not therefore necessarily true. That Tarquin did not abolish the division into classes, seems to me certain; partly because it was advantageous for him to have the improved military organization, and partly because from the connection which he entered into with Latium, we are to conclude that the constitutions of the two states were the same; so that either Servius Tullius gave to the Romans a Latin constitution, or Tarquin to the Latins the Roman one. Even if Tarquin the Proud and his revolution in favour of the patricians, especially those of the third order, are quite historical, yet it is still singular that the third order should seem nevertheless after that revolution to have been inferior to the two others. This very fact, that the interests of the two first tribes clashed with those of the third, paved the way for a popular revolution.
According to Livy and Dionysius, the Latins, with the exception of Gabii, were induced to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome and of Tarquin; on the other hand, Cicero in the books De Republica says, universum Latium bello subegit. Whether this war was merely passed over by the others, or whether Cicero let fall the expression from carelessness only, cannot now be decided. It is probable that there have always existed discrepancies between the narrations of poetry and history: the tale of Turnus Herdonius has a highly poetical colouring. Whilst under Servius there was an alliance with reciprocity, Latium now entered into that relation in which afterwards the Socii Italici stood, when they bound themselves ad majestatem populi Romani comiter colendam. It seems also that the Latins, when there was a change of rulers at Rome, had refused to renew the alliance concluded under the late king.
In the alliance between Rome and Carthage, (of which the original treaty was kept among the archives of the ædiles, which also Polybius, as he states himself, not without a great deal of trouble, translated into Greek, since even the Romans themselves could hardly decypher and tell the meaning of the old writing; an alliance which was to be renewed from time to time, as in our days is still the case with those with the Barbary states,) we see the whole coast, not only of the Prisci Latini, but as far as Terracina, which at that time perhaps was still Tyrrhenian and not Volscian, in the possession of Rome; its inhabitants are called in the Greek translation ὑπήκοοι. Rome concludes the alliance for them as well as for herself; it is stipulated that, if the Carthaginians should make conquests in Latium, they were to give them up to the Romans. This treaty is as authentic as any thing can be: it is a strange whim of an otherwise estimable man,[83] to take it for an invention of Polybius. Here, therefore, Latium is still dependent on Rome, to which dependence Livy also bears witness: it was a relation newly established. Afterwards, when all as far as Antium rise up in hostility against Rome, we again recognise a decline of Roman power. The Feriæ Latinæ are an assembly of all the Latin nations, not merely of the Prisci Latini on the Alban Hill, where we know that the Latin authorities must needs have had the presidency. Yet Dionysius tells us that Tarquin had established the festival; that a bullock was killed, of which the delegates of the several towns each received a piece (carnem Latinis accipere). The Milanese Scholiast on Cicero’s oration for Plancius[84] says, that with regard to this there had been a different tradition; that some had ascribed the festival to Tarquinius Priscus,—this is a mere falsification for Tarquinius Superbus out of spite against the latter, just as the foundation of the Capitol was referred to the former king,—others to the Prisci Latini, which consequently would place it in the earliest times. The latter are perfectly right. The festivals existed long before Tarquin, as long as there was a Latin people. Yet, at the same time, the other opinion has arisen from a mistake which is very easily accounted for; for if Tarquin the Proud obtained the supremacy over Latium, he would also naturally preside at the sacrifices as the Ætolians did at Delphi during their hegemony, from whence the well known expression in the inscriptions, ἱερομνημονούντων Αἰτωλῶν.
In order to make a full use of Latium for his own ends, whilst yet he did not quite trust the Latins, he did not wish to admit their troops in distinct legions, under their own officers. He therefore combined the Roman with the Latin legions, and then divided these again into two parts. The Latins had a similar organization to that of the Romans: the system of centuries among the latter was based upon the thirty tribes, among the former upon the thirty towns. He united two centuries into a maniple, the Roman officer being primus centurio; as in the East Indian possessions of the English, the officers are exclusively Europeans.[85] Livy confounds the primus centurio with the primipilus. Here the maniples now first make their appearance; and this is the plain meaning of what Livy tells in a confused manner, but which may certainly be unravelled.
We are, however, not a little puzzled as to what we are to believe of the detached accounts. It is stated that Tarquin had established colonies at Signia and Circeii, and that he had taken Gabii by stratagem. The latter is false, and the accounts are compiled out of two in Herodotus of Zopyrus and of Thrasybulus of Miletus. Authentic is the alliance with Gabii, from which we see that Gabii was out of the union of the thirty towns, the relation with which had been already settled before. Still in the times of Horace, the original treaty, one of the few which had been preserved, was kept in a temple. It is clear from it, that Gabii had acquired isopolity by a formal compact.
THE REGIFUGIUM. ROME A REPUBLIC.
We may readily believe that Sextus Tarquinius committed the outrage against Lucretia, as indeed similar things happen even now in Turkey, and are told in the middle ages, of the Italian princes down to Pietro Luigi Farnese (in the sixteenth century), and in ancient history of Demetrius Poliorcetes at Athens. Cicero is quite right when he says that the misfortune was this, that the offence was committed against a matron of one of the most powerful families. To all the other details linked with it, from which the history derives its individuality, to the connexion with the campaign against Ardea, not the slightest credit is to be given. The king is said to have been in the camp before Ardea, and a truce to have been concluded there for fifteen years. Yet Ardea had already before been dependent upon Rome, and was one of those towns in the name of which she concluded the alliance with Carthage. Nothing, therefore, is likely to be true but the ill usage of Lucreia, and that her death kindled into a blaze the fire which had long been smouldering.
We are in just as much perplexity with regard to the character of Brutus. He is said to have feigned himself half-witted, concerning which there exist several accounts. The mission to Delphi with the sons of Tarquin, although such a one had already before been sent from Agylla, seems to betray a later hand, the same which put in the stories from Herodotus. It is said, moreover, that Tarquin, in order to render harmless the dignity of tribune of the Celeres, which was second only to that of the king, had conferred it upon Brutus. There is every likelihood, however, that the story of the stupidity of Brutus was merely derived from his name. Brutus is without doubt an Oscan word, the same which is in the name of the Bruttians; it means a run-away slave, a designation which the overbearing factio regis gave the leader of the rebels because he was a plebeian,—a case just like that of the Gueux. Is it conceivable that an eminent king should have made an utter fool (whom he might have put to death) tribune of the Celeres, in order to bring the dignity into contempt? Tarquin was not the kind of tyrant who was obliged to paralyze the state that he might rule over it; he could allow it strength, and yet govern it by the superior weight of his own personal qualities. Nor does the opinion which the Romans had of him incline that way; his statue remained in the Capitol together with those of the other kings.
A question which formerly much engaged my attention is this: How could Brutus, a plebeian, be Tribunus Celerum, although the Celeres were the patrician knights? I think I have found the key to it. Writers speak of him as if he had been the only tribune of the Celeres, whereas there were several of them, as Dionysius already mentions in the enumeration of the priestly offices in his account of Numa. The Celeres were the horsemen; yet the plebeians also had their knights, and these formed a fourth order. Now as each of the patrician tribes had its tribune, is it not according to analogy that among the thirty tribunes of the plebeians there was one who represented the plebeian Celeres as opposed to the patricians? The Magister Equitum, whose office is looked upon as a continuation of the dignity of the Tribunus Celerum, was not necessarily a patrician: P. Licinius Crassus was elected to it. This magistrate stood at the head of all the eighteen centuries of the knights, in which the plebeians had the preponderance. As a fourth estate the plebeians likewise appear in the remarkable adjustment of the estates, in the year of the city 388, when to the three holidays, which were kept at Rome corresponding to the three tribes, a fourth day was added; certainly because the plebeians now as a body were placed on an equal footing with the patricians, although not of such importance in the eyes of the latter, that three days should also be set apart for them.
To give the revolution the necessary sanction, it is said that Collatinus brought Brutus with him, and Sp. Lucretius Valerius. Now, we may positively assert, that Sp. Lucretius belonged to the Ramnes; Valerius, to the Tities;[86] Collatinus, to the Luceres; and as to Brutus, from what we have just seen, we may class him among the plebeians. That Valerius belonged to the Tities was generally acknowledged by the ancients: it is stated of him in Cicero, that he was consul together with Lucretius, to whom he yielded the Fasces, quia minor natu erat. Yet Cicero here confounds gentes minores with minor natu, the less privileged tribe being called minor. We know from Dionysius, that when the two first tribes were placed on an equal footing, the third was called νεώτεροι (minor). Collatinus was of the Gens of the Tarquinii, consequently a Lucer. Brutus is a plebeian; Cicero’s belief in the descent of the Junii Bruti from our L. Junius Brutus is beyond a doubt; and this is of greater weight than the denial of those who wrote after the battle of Philippi. M. Brutus was to be considered as a homo insitivus, as an outlaw. We already perceive from Posidonius that the question of the descent of the Bruti was mooted. Much may be said in support of the opinion of those who take him to be a patrician; certainly many patrician clans have survived in some plebeian families; a transitio ad plebem was made most frequently by unequal marriages, and although the cognomen was then generally wont to be a plebeian one, yet it might be surmised that such an illustrious name as that of Brutus had been retained. But as long as the consulship was not open to the plebeians, no Junius occurs among the consuls. In the earlier times of the republic a tribune of the people, one L. Brutus, is mentioned, who plays a prominent part as the framer of an important plebiscitum in the trial of Coriolanus (in Dionysius also, at the time of the secessio, which is a falsification). This Brutus is a real person; but just like the whole story of Coriolanus, he belongs to quite a different period.