In the next year Valerius was again made consul, with T. Lucretius; and Tarquinius, despairing now of aid from his friends at Veii and Tarquinii, went to Lars Porsenna of Clusium, a city on the river Clanis, which falls into the Tiber.  Porsenna was at this time acknowledged as chief of the twelve Etruscan cities; and he assembled a powerful army and came to Rome.  He came so quickly that he reached the Tiber and was near the Sublician Bridge before there was time to destroy it; and if he had crossed it the city would have been lost.  Then a noble Roman, called Horatius Codes, of the Lucerian tribe, with two friends—­Sp.  Lartius, a Ramnian, and T. Herminius, a Titian—­posted themselves at the far end of the bridge, and defended the passage against all the Etruscan host, while the Romans were cutting it off behind them.  When it was all but destroyed, his two friends retreated across the bridge, and Horatius was left alone to bear the whole attack of the enemy.  Well he kept his ground, standing unmoved amid the darts which were showered upon his shield, till the last beams of the bridge fell crashing into the river.  Then he prayed, saying, “Father Tiber, receive me and bear me up, I pray thee.”  So he plunged in, and reached the other side safely; and the Romans honored him greatly:  they put up his statue in the Comitium, and gave him as much land as he could plough round in a day, and every man at Rome subscribed the cost of one day’s food to reward him.

Then Porsenna, disappointed in his attempt to surprise the city, occupied the Hill Janiculum, and besieged the city, so that the people were greatly distressed by hunger.  But C. Mucius, a noble youth, resolved to deliver his country by the death of the king.  So he armed himself with a dagger, and went to the place where the king was used to sit in judgment.  It chanced that the soldiers were receiving their pay from the king’s secretary, who sat at his right hand splendidly apparelled; and as this man seemed to be chief in authority, Mucius thought that this must be the king; so he stabbed him to the heart.  Then the guards seized him and dragged him before the king, who was greatly enraged, and ordered them to burn him alive if he would not confess the whole affair.  Then Mucius stood before the king and said:  “See how little thy tortures can avail to make a brave man tell the secrets committed to him”; and so saying, he thrust his right hand into the fire of the altar, and held it in the flame with unmoved countenance.  Then the king marvelled at his courage, and ordered him to be spared, and sent away in safety:  “for,” said he, “thou art a brave man, and hast done more harm to thyself than to me.”  Then Mucius replied:  “Thy generosity, O king, prevails more with me than thy threats.  Know that three hundred Roman youths have sworn thy death:  my lot came first.  But all the rest remain, prepared to do and suffer like myself.”  So he was let go, and returned home, and was called “Scaevola,” or “The Left-handed,” because his right hand had been burnt off.