The influence of Tarquin among the chief men of the Latins being now considerable, he issued an order that they should assemble on a certain day at the grove of Ferentina,[47] saying that there were matters of common interest about which he wished to confer with them.  They assembled in great numbers at daybreak.  Tarquinius himself kept the day indeed, but did not arrive until shortly before sunset.  Many matters were there discussed in the meeting throughout the day in various conversations.  Turnus Herdonius of Aricia inveighed violently against the absent Tarquin, saying that it was no wonder the surname of Proud was given him at Rome; for so they now called him secretly and in whispers, but still generally.  Could anything show more haughtiness than this insolent mockery of the entire Latin nation?  After their chiefs had been summoned so great a distance from home, he who had proclaimed the meeting did not attend; assuredly their patience was being tried, in order that, if they submitted to the yoke, he might crush them when at his mercy.  For who could fail to see that he was aiming at sovereignty over the Latins?  This sovereignty, if his own countrymen had done well in having intrusted it to him, or if it had been intrusted and not seized on by murder, the Latins also ought to intrust to him (and yet not even so, inasmuch as he was a foreigner).  But if his own subjects were dissatisfied with him (seeing that they were butchered one after another, driven into exile, and deprived of their property), what better prospects were held out to the Latins?  If they listened to him, they would depart thence, each to his own home, and take no more notice of the day of meeting than he who had proclaimed it.  When this man, mutinous and full of daring, and one who had obtained influence at home by such methods, was pressing these and other observations to the same effect, Tarquin appeared on the scene.  This put an end to his harangue.  All turned away from him to salute Tarquin, who, on silence being proclaimed, being advised by those next him to make some excuse for having come so late, said that he had been chosen arbitrator between a father and a son:  that, from his anxiety to reconcile them, he had delayed:  and, because that duty had taken up that day, that on the morrow he would carry out what he had determined.  They say that he did not make even that observation unrebuked by Turnus, who declared that no controversy could be more quickly decided than one between father and son, and that it could be settled in a few words—­unless the son submitted to the father, he would be punished.