The third king, Tullus Hostilius, was a warrior.  He made war on Alba, the capital of the Latin confederation, took and destroyed it.

Ancus Martius, the fourth king, was the grandson of Numa and built the wooden bridge over the Tiber and founded the port of Ostia through which commerce passed up the river to Rome.

The last three kings were Etruscans.  Tarquin the Elder enlarged the territory of Rome and introduced religious ceremonies from Etruria.  Servius Tullius organized the Roman army, admitting all the citizens without distinction of birth and separating them into centuries (companies) according to wealth.  The last king, Tarquinius Superbus, oppressed the great families of Rome; some of the nobles conspired against him and succeeded in expelling him.  Since this time there were no longer any kings.  The Roman state, or as they said, the commonwealth (res publica) was governed by the consuls, two magistrates elected each year.

It is impossible to know how much truth there is in this tradition, for it took shape a long time after the Romans began to write their history, and it includes so many legends that we cannot accept it in its entirety.

Attempt has been made to explain these names of kings as symbols of a race or class.  The early history of Rome has been reconstructed in a variety of ways, but the greater the labor applied to it, the less the agreement among students with regard to it.

=The Roman People.=—­About the fifth century before Christ there were in Rome two classes of people, the patricians and the plebeians.  The patricians were the descendants of the old families who had lived from remote antiquity on the little territory in the vicinity of the city; they alone had the right to appear in the assembly of the people, to assist in religious ceremonies, and to hold office.  Their ancestors had founded the Roman state, or as they called it, the Roman city (Civitas), and these had bequeathed it to them.  And so they were the true people of Rome.

=The Plebs.=—­The plebeians were descended from the foreigners[117] established in the city, and especially from the conquered peoples of the neighboring cities; for Rome had gradually subjected all the Latin cities and had forcibly annexed their inhabitants.  Subjects and yet aliens, they obeyed the government of Rome, but they could have no part in it.  They did not possess the Roman religion and could not participate in its ceremonies.  They had not even the right of intermarrying with the patrician families.  They were called the plebs (the multitude) and were not considered a part of the Roman people.  In the old prayers we still find this formula:  “For the welfare of the people and the plebs of Rome.”

=Strife between Patricians and Plebeians.=—­The people and the plebs were like two distinct peoples, one of masters, the other of subjects.  And yet the plebeians were much like the patricians.  Soldiers, like them, they served in the army at their own cost and suffered death in the service of the Roman people; peasants like them, they lived on their domains.  Many of the plebeians were rich and of ancient family.  The only difference was that they were descended from a great family of some conquered Latin city, while the patricians were the scions of an old family in the conquering city.