Servius Tullus was looked on by the Romans as having begun making their laws, as Romulus had put their warlike affairs in order, and Numa had settled their religion.  The Romans were all in great clans or families, all with one name, and these were classed in tribes.  The nobler ones, who could count up from old Trojan, Latin, or Sabine families, were called Patricians—­from pater, a father—­because they were fathers of the people; and the other families were called Plebeian, from plebs, the people.  The patricians formed the Senate or Council of Government, and rode on horseback in war, while the plebeians fought on foot.  They had spears, round shields, and short pointed swords, which cut on each side of the blade.  Tullus is said to have fixed how many men of each tribe should be called out to war.  He also walled in the city again with a wall five miles round; and he made many fixed laws, one being that when a man was in debt his goods might be seized, but he himself might not be made a slave.  He was the great friend of the plebeians, and first established the rule that a new law of the Senate could not be made without the consent of the Comitia, or whole free people.

The Sabines and Romans were still striving for the mastery, and a husbandman among the Sabines had a wonderfully beautiful cow.  An oracle declared that the man who sacrificed this cow to Diana upon the Aventine Hill would secure the chief power to his nation.  The Sabine drove the cow to Rome, and was going to kill her, when a crafty Roman priest told him that he must first wash his hands in the Tiber, and while he was gone sacrificed the cow himself, and by this trick secured the rule to Rome.  The great horns of the cow were long after shown in the temple of Diana on the Aventine, where Romans, Sabines, and Latins every year joined in a great sacrifice.

The two daughters of Servius were married to their cousins, the two young Tarquins.  In each pair there was a fierce and a gentle one.  The fierce Tullia was the wife of the gentle Aruns Tarquin; the gentle Tulla had married the proud Lucius Tarquin.  Aruns’ wife tried to persuade her husband to seize the throne that had belonged to his father, and when he would not listen to her, she agreed with his brother Lucius that, while he murdered her sister, she should kill his brother, and then that they should marry.  The horrid deed was carried out, and old Servius, seeing what a wicked pair were likely to come after him, began to consider with the Senate whether it would not be better to have two consuls or magistrates chosen every year than a king.  This made Lucius Tarquin the more furious, and going to the Senate, where the patricians hated the king as the friend of the plebeians, he stood upon the throne, and was beginning to tell the patricians that this would be the ruin of their greatness, when Servius came in and, standing on the steps of the doorway, ordered him to come down.  Tarquin sprang on the