5. And thus the second attempt to restore King Tarquin was frustrated. After the death of Brutus, Valerius, the remaining consul, ruled the people for awhile by himself, and began to build himself a house upon the ridge called Velia, which looks down upon the forum. So the people thought that he was going to make himself king; but when he heard this, he called an assembly of the people, and appeared before them with his fasces lowered, and with no axes in them, whence the custom remained ever after, that no consular lictors wore axes within the city, and no consul had power of life and death except when he was in command of his legions abroad. And he pulled down the beginning of his house upon the Velia, and built it below that hill. Also, he passed laws that every Roman citizen might appeal to the people against the judgment of the chief magistrates. Wherefore he was greatly honored among the people, and was called Poplicola, or Friend of the People.
6. After this Valerius called together the great assembly of the centuries, and they chose Spurius Lucretius, father of Lucretius, to succeed Brutus. But he was an old man, and not many days afterward he died, and Marcus Horatius was chosen in his stead.
7. The temple on the Capitol which King Tarquin began had never yet been consecrated. Then Valerius and Horatius drew lots which should be the consecrator, and the lot fell on Horatius. But the friends of Valerius murmured, and they wished to prevent Horatius from having the honor; so, when he was now saying the prayer of consecration, with his hand upon the door-post of the temple, there came a messenger who told him that his son was just dead, and that one mourning for a son could not rightly consecrate the temple. But Horatius kept his hand upon the door-post, and told them to see to the burial of his son, and finished the rite of consecration. Thus did he honor the gods even above his own son.
8. In the next year Valerius was again made consul, with Titus Lucretius; and Tarquin, despairing now of aid from his friends at Veii and Tarquinii, went to Lars Porsena of Clusium, a city on the river Clanis, which falls into the Tiber. Porsena was, at this time, acknowledged as chief of the twelve Etruscan cities; and he assembled a powerful army and came to Rome. He came so quickly that he reached the Tiber, and was near the Sublician Bridge before there was time to destroy it; and if he had crossed it the city would have been lost.
9. Then, a noble Roman, called Horatius Cocles, of the Lucerian tribe, with two friends—Spurius Lartius, a Ramnian, and Titus Herminius, a Titian—posted themselves at the far end of the bridge, and defended the passage against all the Etruscan host, while the Romans were cutting it off behind them. When it was all but destroyed, his two friends retreated across the bridge, and Horatius was left alone to bear the whole attack of the enemy. He kept his ground, standing unmoved amid the darts which were showered upon his shield, till the last beams of the bridge fell crashing into the river. Then he prayed, saying, "Father Tiber, receive me, and bear me up I pray thee." He then plunged in, and reached the other side safely; and the Romans honored him greatly: they put up his statue in the Comitium, and gave him as much land as he could plow round in a day, and every man at Rome subscribed the cost of one day's food to reward him.
Liddell.
10. This story is told in very spirited verse by Macaulay, in his poem of Horatius:
HORATIUS.
1. Fast by the royal standard,
O'erlooking all the war,
Lars Porsena of Clusium
Sate in his ivory car.
By the right wheel rode Mamilius,
Prince of the Latian name;
And by the left false Sextus,
That wrought the deed of shame.