removing their effects, they set out for Rome.  They happened to have reached the Janiculum:  there, as he sat in the chariot with his wife, an eagle, gently swooping down on floating wings, took off his cap, and hovering above the chariot with loud screams, as if it had been sent from heaven for that very purpose, carefully replaced it on his head, and then flew aloft out of sight.  Tanaquil is said to have joyfully welcomed this omen, being a woman well skilled, as the Etruscans generally are, in celestial prodigies, and, embracing her husband, bade him hope for a high and lofty destiny:  that such a bird had come from such a quarter of the heavens, and the messenger of such a god:  that it had declared the omen around the highest part of man:  that it had lifted the ornament placed on the head of man, to restore it to him again, by direction of the gods.  Bearing with them such hopes and thoughts, they entered the city, and having secured a dwelling there, they gave out his name as Lucius Tarquinius Priscus.  The fact that he was a stranger and his wealth rendered him an object of attention to the Romans.  He himself also promoted his own good fortune by his affable address, by the courteousness of his invitations, and by gaining over to his side all whom he could by acts of kindness, until reports concerning him reached even to the palace:  and that notoriety he, in a short time, by paying his court to the king without truckling and with skilful address, improved so far as to be admitted on a footing of intimate friendship, so much so that he was present at all public and private deliberations alike, both foreign and domestic; and being now proved in every sphere, he was at length, by the king’s will, also appointed guardian to his children.

Ancus reigned twenty-four years, equal to any of the former kings both in the arts of war and peace, and in renown.  His sons were now nigh the age of puberty; for which reason Tarquin was more urgent that the assembly for the election of a king should be held as soon as possible.  The assembly having been proclaimed, he sent the boys out of the way to hunt just before the time of the meeting.  He is said to have been the first who canvassed for the crown, and to have made a speech expressly worded with the object of gaining the affections of the people:  saying that he did not aim at anything unprecedented, for that he was not the first foreigner (a thing at which any one might feel indignation or surprise), but the third who aspired to the sovereignty of Rome.  That Tatius who had not only been an alien, but even an enemy, had been made king; that Numa, who knew nothing of the city, and without solicitation on his part, had been voluntarily invited by them to the throne.  That he, from the time he was his own master, had migrated to Rome with his wife and whole fortune, and had spent a longer period of that time of life, during which men are employed in civil offices, at Rome, than he had in his native country; that he had both