Does your confidence in me rest on such slight foundations, that it matters more where I am than what I am?  The house of Publius Valerius shall not stand in the way of your liberty, Quirites; the Velian Mount shall be secure to you.  I will not only bring down my house into the plain, but will build it beneath the hill, that you may dwell above me, the suspected citizen.  Let those build on the Velian Mount, to whom liberty can be more safely intrusted than to Publius Valerius.”  Immediately all the materials were brought down to the foot of the Velian Mount, and the house was built at the foot of the hill, where the Temple of Vica Pota[7] now stands.

After this laws were proposed by the consul, such as not only freed him from all suspicion of aiming at regal power, but had so contrary a tendency, that they even made him popular.  At this time he was surnamed Publicola.  Above all, the laws regarding an appeal to the people against the magistrates, and declaring accursed the life and property of any one who should have formed the design of seizing regal authority,[8] were welcome to the people.  Having passed these laws while sole consul, so that the merit of them might be exclusively his own, he then held an assembly for the election of a new colleague.  Spurius Lucretius was elected consul, who, owing to his great age, and his strength being inadequate to discharge the consular duties, died within a few days.  Marcus Horatius Pulvillus was chosen in the room of Lucretius.  In some ancient authorities I find no mention of Lucretius as consul; they place Horatius immediately after Brutus.  My own belief is that, because no important event signalized his consulate, all record of it has been lost.  The Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol had not yet been dedicated; the conuls Valerius and Horatius cast lots which should dedicate it.  The duty fell by lot to Horatius.  Publicola departed to conduct the war against the Veientines.  The friends of Valerius were more annoyed than the circumstances demanded that the dedication of so celebrated a temple was given to Horatius.  Having endeavoured by every means to prevent it, when all other attempts had been tried and failed, at the moment when the consul was holding the door-post during his offering of prayer to the gods, they suddenly announced to him the startling intelligence that his son was dead, and that, while his family was polluted by death, he could not dedicate the temple.  Whether he did not believe that it was true, or whether he possessed such great strength of mind, is neither handed down for certain, nor is it easy to decide.  On receiving the news, holding the door-post, without turning off his attention in any other way from the business he was engaged completed the form of prayer, and dedicated the temple.  Such were the transactions at home and abroad during the first year after the expulsion of the kings.  After this Publius Valerius, for the second time, and Titus Lucretius were elected consuls.