had become labourers and stone-cutters.  The unnatural murder of King Servius Tullius was recalled, and the fact of his daughter having driven over the body of her father in her impious chariot, and the gods who avenge parents were invoked by him.  By stating these and, I believe, other facts still more shocking, which, though by no means easy to be detailed by writers, the then heinous state of things suggested, he so worked upon the already incensed multitude, that they deprived the king of his authority, and ordered the banishment of Lucius Tarquinius with his wife and children.  He himself, having selected and armed some of the younger men, who gave in their names as volunteers, set out for the camp at Ardea to rouse the army against the king:  the command in the city he left to Lucretius, who had been already appointed prefect of the city by the king.  During this tumult Tullia fled from her house, both men and women cursing her wherever she went, and invoking upon her the wrath of the furies, the avengers of parents.

News of these transactions having reached the camp, when the king, alarmed at this sudden revolution, was proceeding to Rome to quell the disturbances, Brutus—­for he had had notice of his approach—­turned aside, to avoid meeting him; and much about the same time Brutus and Tarquinius arrived by different routes, the one at Ardea, the other at Rome.  The gates were shut against Tarquin, and sentence of banishment declared against him; the camp welcomed with great joy the deliverer of the city, and the king’s sons were expelled.  Two of them followed their father, and went into exile to Caere, a city of Etruria.  Sextus Tarquinius, who had gone to Gabii, as if to his own kingdom, was slain by the avengers of the old feuds, which he had stirred up against himself by his rapines and murders.  Lucius Tarquinius Superbus reigned twenty-five years:  the regal form of government lasted, from the building of the city to its deliverance, two hundred and forty-four years.  Two consuls, Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, were elected by the prefect of at the comitia of centuries, according to the commentaries of Servius Tullius.

[Footnote 1:  Books I-III are based upon the translation by John Henry Freese, but in many places have been revised or retranslated by Duffield Osborne.]

[Footnote 2:  The king was originally the high priest, his office more sacerdotal than military:  as such he would have the selection and appointment of the Vestal Virgins, the priestesses of Vesta, the hearth-goddess.  Their chief duty was to keep the sacred fire burning ("the fire that burns for aye"), and to guard the relics in the Temple of Vesta.  If convicted of unchastity they were buried alive.]

[Footnote 3:  Surely there is no lack of “historical criticism” here and on a subject where a Roman writer might be pardoned for some credulity.—­D.O.]

[Footnote 4:  Livy ignores the more accepted and prettier tradition that this event took place where the sacred fig-tree originally stood, and that later it was miraculously transplanted to the comitium by Attius Navius, the famous augur, “That it might stand in the midst of the meetings of the Romans”—­D.O.]