to do shall be performed.”  Attus, having taken an augury on almost the very spot, replied immediately:  “Verily, O King, what you intend shall be fulfilled.”  “Well, then,” said the other, “take this whetstone and cut it through with this razor; this is what I have had in mind to come to pass.”  Attus at once took the stone and cut it through.  Tarquinius, in admiration, heaped various honors upon him, accorded him the privilege of a bronze image, and did not again make any change in the established constitution, but employed Attus as a counselor on all matters.

He fought against the Latins who had revolted, and afterwards against the Sabines, who, aided by the Etruscans as allies, had invaded the Roman country; and he conquered them all.  He discovered that one of the priestesses of Vesta, who are required by custom to remain virgins all their life, had been seduced by a man, whereupon he arranged a kind of underground chamber with a long passage, and after placing in it a bed, a light, and a table nearly full of foods, he brought thither the unchaste woman escorted by a procession and having introduced her alive into the room walled it up.  From his institution this plan of punishing those of the priestesses that do not keep their virginity has continued to prevail.  The men that outrage them have their necks inserted in cloven pillars in the Forum, and then are maltreated naked until they give up the ghost.

However, an attack was made upon Tarquinius by the children of Marcius because he would not yield the sovereignty to them, but instead placed a certain Tullius, borne to him by a slave woman, at the head of them all.  This more than anything else displeased the patricians.  The young men interested some of the latter class in their cause and formed a plot against the king.  They arrayed two men like rustics, equipped with axes and scythes, and made them ready to attack him.  So these two, when they did not find Tarquinius in the Forum, went to the royal court (pretending, of course, to have a dispute with each other) and asked for admission to his presence.  Their request was granted and they began to make opposing arguments, and while Tarquinius was giving his attention to one of them pleading his cause, the other slew him.

VII, 9.—­Such was the end that befell Tarquinius who had ruled for thirty-eight years.  By the cooeperation of Tanaquil, wife of Tarquinius, Tullius succeeded to the kingdom of Rome.  He was the child of a certain woman named Ocrisia, the wife of Spurius Tullius, a Latin; she had been captured in the war and chosen by Tarquinius:  she had either become pregnant at home or conceived after her capture; both stories are current.  When Tullius had reached boyhood he went to sleep on a chair once in the daytime and a quantity of fire seemed to leap from his head.  Tarquinius, seeing it, took an active interest in the child and on his arriving at maturity had him enrolled among the patricians and in the senate.