Tarquin then recalled the Latins to the meeting, and having applauded them for having inflicted well-merited punishment on Turnus, as one convicted of murder, by his attempt to bring about a change of government, spoke as follows:  That he could indeed proceed by a long-established right; because, since all the Latins were sprung from Alba, they were comprehended in that treaty by which, dating from the time of Tullus, the entire Alban nation, with its colonies, had passed under the dominion of Rome.  However, for the sake of the interest of all parties, he thought rather that that treaty should be renewed, and that the Latins should rather share in the enjoyment of the prosperity of the Roman people, than be constantly either apprehending or suffering the demolition of their towns and the devastation of their lands, which they had formerly suffered in the reign of Ancus, and afterward in the reign of his own father.  The Latins were easily persuaded, though in that treaty the advantage lay on the side of Rome:  however, they both saw that the chiefs of the Latin nation sided with and supported the king, and Turnus was a warning example, still fresh in their recollections, of the danger that threatened each individually, if he should make any opposition.  Thus the treaty was renewed, and notice was given to the young men of the Latins that, according to the treaty, they should attend in considerable numbers in arms, on a certain day, at the grove of Ferentina.  And when they assembled from all the states according to the edict of the Roman king, in order that they should have neither a general of their own, nor a separate command, nor standards of their own, he formed mixed companies of Latins and Romans so as out of a pair of companies to make single companies, and out of single companies to make a pair:  and when the companies had thus been doubled, he appointed centurions over them.

Nor was Tarquin, though a tyrannical prince in time of peace, an incompetent general in war; nay, he would have equalled his predecessors in that art, had not his degeneracy in other ways likewise detracted from his merit in this respect.  He first began the war against the Volsci, which was to last two hundred years after his time, and took Suessa Pometia from them by storm; and when by the sale of the spoils he had realized forty talents of silver, he conceived the idea of building a temple to Jupiter on such a magnificent scale that it should be worthy of the king of gods and men, of the Roman Empire, and of the dignity of the place itself:  for the building of this temple he set apart the money realized by the sale of the spoils.  Soon after a war claimed his attention, which proved more protracted than he had expected, in which, having in vain attempted to storm Gabii,[48] a city in the neighbourhood, when, after suffering a repulse from the walls, he was deprived also of all hope of taking it by siege, he assailed it by fraud and stratagem, a method by no means natural