Both sides kept faith:  the Romans restored their pledge of peace according to treaty:  and with the Etruscan king valour found not only security, but also honour; and, after praising the maiden, he promised to give her, as a present, half the hostages, allowing her to choose whom she pleased.  When they had all been led forth, she is said to have picked out those below the age of puberty, a choice which both reflected honour upon her maiden delicacy, and was one likely to be approved of by consent of the hostages themselves—­that those who were of such an age as was most exposed to injury should above all others be delivered from the enemy.  Peace being renewed, the Romans rewarded this instance of bravery uncommon in a woman with an uncommon kind of honour:  an equestrian statue, which, representing a maiden sitting on horseback, was erected at the top of the Via Sacra.[14]

The custom handed down from the ancients, and which has continued down to our times among other usages at public sales, that of selling the goods of King Porsina, is inconsistent with this account of so peaceful a departure of the Etruscan king from the city.  The origin of this custom must either have arisen during the war, and not been abandoned in time of peace, or it must have grown from a milder beginning than the form of expression seems, on the face of it, to indicate, of selling the goods as if taken from an enemy.  Of the accounts handed down, the most probable is, that Porsina, when retiring from the Janiculum, made a present to the Romans of his camp rich with stores of provisions conveyed from the neighbouring fertile fields of Etruria, as the city was then exhausted owing to the long siege:  that then, to prevent its contents being plundered as if it belonged to an enemy when the people were admitted, they were sold, and called the goods of Porsina, the expression rather conveying the idea of a thankworthy gift than an auction of the king’s property, seeing that this never even came into the power of the Roman people.  Porsina, having abandoned the war against the Romans, that his army might not seem to have been led into those parts to no purpose, sent his son Arruns with part of his forces to besiege Aricia.  The unexpected occurrence at first terrified the Aricians:  afterward aid, which had been sent for, both from the people of Latium and from Cumae,[15] inspired such hope that they ventured to try the issue of a pitched battle.  At the beginning of the battle the Etruscans attacked so furiously that they routed the Aricians at the first onset.  But the Cuman cohorts, employing stratagem against force, moved off a little to one side, and when the enemy were carried beyond them in loose array, they wheeled round and attacked them in the rear.  By this means the Etruscans, when on the point of victory, were hemmed in and cut to pieces.  A very small number of them, having lost their general, and having no nearer refuge, came to Rome without their arms, in the plight and guise of suppliants.  There they were kindly received and distributed in different lodgings.  When their wounds had been attended to, some with.  Affection for their hosts and for the city caused many others to remain at Rome:  a quarter was assigned them to dwell in, which has ever since been called the Tuscan Street.[16]