Of those who had an estate of a hundred thousand asses or more, he made eighty centuries, forty of seniors and forty of juniors. All these were called the first class, the seniors were to be in readiness to guard the city, the juniors to carry on war abroad. The arms enjoined them were a helmet, a round shield, greaves, and a coat of mail, all of brass; these were for the defence of their body; their weapons of offence were a spear and a sword. To this class were added two centuries of mechanics, who were to serve without arms; the duty imposed upon them was to carry the military engines. The second class comprehended all whose estate was from seventy-five to a hundred thousand asses, and of these, seniors and juniors, twenty centuries were enrolled. The arms enjoined them were a buckler instead of a shield, and except a coat of mail, all the rest were the same. He appointed the property of the third class to amount to fifty thousand asses; the number of centuries was the same, and formed with the same distinction of age, nor was there any change in their arms, only greaves were taken from them. In the fourth class, the property was twenty-five thousand asses, the same number of centuries was formed: the arms were changed, nothing was given them but a spear and a long javelin. The fifth class was increased, thirty centuries were formed; these carried slings and stones for throwing. Among them were reckoned the horn-blowers, and the trumpeters, distributed into three centuries. This whole class was rated at eleven thousand asses. Property lower than this comprehended all the rest of the citizens, and of them one century was made up which was exempted from serving in war. Having thus divided and armed the infantry, he levied twelve centuries of knights from among the chief men of the state. Likewise out of the three centuries, appointed by Romulus, he formed other six under the same names which they had received at their first institution. Ten thousand asses were given them out of the public revenue, for the buying of horses, and widows were assigned them, who were to pay two thousand asses yearly for the support of the horses. All these burdens were taken off the poor and laid on the rich. Then an additional honour was conferred upon them; for the suffrage was not now granted promiscuously to all, as it had been established by Romulus, and observed by his successors, to every man with the same privilege and the same right, but gradations were established, so that no one might seem excluded from the right of voting, and yet the whole power might reside in the chief men of the state. For the knights were first called, and then the eighty centuries of the first class; and if they happened to differ, which was seldom the case, those of the second were called: and they seldom ever descended so low as to come to the lowest class. Nor need we be surprised, that the present regulation, which now exists, since the tribes were increased to thirty-five, should not agree in the number of centuries of juniors and seniors with the amount instituted by Servius Tullius, they being now double of what they were at that time. For the city being divided into four parts, according to the regions and hills which were then inhabited, he called these divisions tribes, as I think, from the tribute.[55] For the method of levying taxes rateably according to the value of estates was also introduced by him; nor had these tribes any relation to the number and distribution of the centuries.
The census being now completed, which he had expedited by the terror of a law passed on those not rated, with threats of imprisonment and death, he issued a proclamation that all the Roman citizens, horse and foot, should attend at the dawn of day in the Campus Martius, each in his century. There he drew up his army and performed a lustration of it by the sacrifices called suovetaurilia, and that was called the closing of the lustrum, because that was the conclusion of the census. Eighty thousand citizens are said to have been rated in that survey. Fabius Pictor, the oldest of our historians, adds, that such was the number of those who were able to bear arms. To accommodate that number the city seemed to require enlargement. He adds two hills, the Quirinal and Viminal; then in continuation he enlarges the Esquiliæ, and takes up his own residence there, in order that respectability might attach to the place. He surrounds the city with a rampart, a moat, and a wall: thus he enlarges the pomœrium. They who regard only the etymology of the word, will have the pomœrium to be a space of ground without the walls; but it is rather a space on each side the wall, which the Etrurians in building cities consecrated by augury, reaching to a certain extent both within and without in the direction they intended to raise the wall; so that the houses might not be joined to it on the inside, as they commonly are now, and also that there might be some space without left free from human occupation. This space, which it was not lawful to till or inhabit, the Romans called the pomœrium, not for its being without the wall, more than for the wall's being without it: and in enlarging the city, as far as the walls were intended to proceed outwards, so far these consecrated limits were likewise extended.
The state being increased by the enlargement of the city, and every thing modelled at home and abroad for the exigencies both of peace and war, that the acquisition of power might not always depend on mere force of arms, he endeavoured to extend his empire by policy, and at the same time to add some ornament to the city.[56]The temple of Diana at Ephesus was at that time in high renown; fame represented it to have been built by all the states of Asia, in common. When Servius, amid some grandees of the Latins with whom he had taken pains to form connexions of hospitality and friendship, extolled in high terms such concord and association of their gods, by frequently insisting on the same subject, he at length prevailed so far as that the Latin states agreed to build a temple to Diana at Rome, in conjunction with the Roman people. This was an acknowledgment that Rome was the head of both nations, concerning which they had so often disputed in arms. Though that object seemed to have been left out of consideration by all the Latins, in consequence of the matter having been so often attempted unsuccessfully by arms, fortune seemed to present one of the Sabines with an opportunity of recovering the superiority to his country by his own address. A cow is said to have been calved to a certain person, the head of a family among the Sabines, of surprising size and beauty. Her horns, which were hung up in the porch of the temple of Diana, remained, for many ages, a monument of this wonder. The thing was looked upon as a prodigy, as it was, and the soothsayers declared, that sovereignty would reside in that state of which a citizen should immolate this heifer to Diana. This prediction had also reached the ears of the high priest of Diana. The Sabine, when he thought the proper time for offering the sacrifice was come, drove the cow to Rome, led her to the temple of that goddess, and set her before the altar. The Roman priest, struck with the uncommon size of the victim, so much celebrated by fame, thus accosted the Sabine: "What intendest thou to do, stranger?" says he. "Is it with impure hands to offer a sacrifice to Diana? Why dost not thou first wash thyself in running water? The Tiber runs along in the bottom of that valley." The stranger, being seized with a scruple of conscience, and desirous of having every thing done in due form, that the event might answer the prediction, from the temple went down to the Tiber. In the mean time the priest sacrificed the cow to Diana, which gave great satisfaction to the king, and to the whole state.
Servius, though he had now acquired an indisputable right to the kingdom by long possession, yet as he heard that expressions were sometimes thrown out by young Tarquin, importing, "That he held the crown without the consent of the people," having first secured their good will by dividing among them, man by man, the lands taken from their enemies, he ventured to propose the question to the people, whether they "chose and ordered that he should be king," and was declared king with such unanimity, as had not been observed in the election of any of his predecessors. But this circumstance diminished not Tarquin's hope of obtaining the throne; nay, because he had observed that the question of the distribution of land to the people[57] was carried against the will of the fathers, he felt so much the more satisfied that an opportunity was now presented to him of arraigning Servius before the fathers, and of increasing his own influence in the senate, he being himself naturally of a fiery temper, and his wife, Tullia, at home stimulating his restless temper. For the Roman palace also afforded an instance of tragic guilt, so that through their disgust of kings, liberty might come more matured, and the throne, which should be attained through crime, might be the last. This L. Tarquinius (whether he was the son or grandson of Tarquinius Priscus is not clear; with the greater number of authorities, however, I would say, his son[58]) had a brother, Aruns Tarquinius, a youth of a mild disposition. To these two, as has been already stated, the two Tulliæ, daughters of the king, had been married, they also being of widely different tempers. It had so happened that the two violent dispositions were not united in marriage, through the good fortune, I suspect, of the Roman people, in order that the reign of Servius might be more protracted, and the morals of the state be firmly established. The haughty Tullia was chagrined, that there was no material in her husband, either for ambition or bold daring. Directing all her regard to the other Tarquinius, him she admired, him she called a man, and one truly descended of royal blood; she expressed her contempt of her sister, because, having got a man, she was deficient in the spirit becoming a woman. Similarity of mind soon draws them together, as wickedness is in general most congenial to wickedness. But the commencement of producing general confusion originated with the woman. She, accustomed to the secret conversations of the other's husband, refrained not from using the most contumelious language of her husband to his brother, of her sister to (her sister's) husband, and contended, that it were better that she herself were unmarried, and he single, than that they should be matched unsuitably, so that they must languish away through life by reason of the dastardly conduct of others. If the gods had granted her the husband of whom she was worthy, that she should soon see the crown in her own house, which she now saw at her father's. She soon inspires the young man with her own daring notions. Aruns Tarquinius and the younger Tullia, when they had, by immediate successive deaths, made their houses vacant for new nuptials, are united in marriage, Servius rather not prohibiting than approving the measure.
Then indeed the old age of Servius began to be every day more disquieted, his reign to be more unhappy. For now the woman looked from one crime to another, and suffered not her husband to rest by night or by day, lest their past murders might go for nothing. "That what she had wanted was not a person whose wife she might be called, or one with whom she might in silence live a slave; what she had wanted was one who would consider himself worthy of the throne; who would remember that he was the son of Tarquinius Priscus; who would rather possess a kingdom than hope for it. If you, to whom I consider myself married, are such a one, I address you both as husband and king; but if not, our condition has been changed so far for the worse, as in that person crime is associated with meanness. Why not prepare yourself? It is not necessary for you, as for your father, (coming here) from Corinth or Tarquinii, to strive for foreign thrones. Your household and country's gods, the image of your father, and the royal palace, and the royal throne in that palace, constitute and call you king. Or if you have too little spirit for this, why do you disappoint the nation? Why do you suffer yourself to be looked up to as a prince? Get hence to Tarquinii or Corinth. Sink back again to your (original) race, more like your brother than your father." By chiding him in these and other terms, she spurs on the young man; nor can she herself rest; (indignant) that when Tanaquil, a foreign woman, could achieve so great a project, as to bestow two successive thrones on her husband, and then on her son-in-law, she, sprung from royal blood, should have no weight in bestowing and taking away a kingdom. Tarquinius, driven on by these frenzied instigations of the woman, began to go round and solicit the patricians, especially those of the younger families;[59] reminded them of his father's kindness, and claimed a return for it; enticed the young men by presents; increased his interest, as well by making magnificent promises on his own part, as by inveighing against the king at every opportunity. At length, as soon as the time seemed convenient for accomplishing his object, he rushed into the forum, accompanied by a party of armed men; then, whilst all were struck with dismay, seating himself on the throne before the senate-house, he ordered the fathers to be summoned to the senate-house by the crier to attend king Tarquinius. They assembled immediately, some being already prepared for the occasion, some through fear, lest their not having come might prove detrimental to them, astounded at the novelty and strangeness of the matter, and considering that it was now all over with Servius. Then Tarquinius, commencing his invectives against his immediate ancestors: "that a slave, and born of a slave, after the untimely death of his parent, without an interregnum being adopted, as on former occasions, without any comitia (being held), without the suffrages of the people, or the sanction of the fathers, he had taken possession of the kingdom as the gift of a woman. That so born, so created king, ever a favourer of the most degraded class, to which he himself belongs, through a hatred of the high station of others, he had taken their land from the leading men of the state and divided it among the very meanest; that he had laid all the burdens, which were formerly common, on the chief members of the community; that he had instituted the census, in order that the fortune of the wealthier citizens might be conspicuous to (excite) public envy, and that all was prepared whence he might bestow largesses on the most needy, whenever he might please."