Ab urbe condita

Servius was now confirmed on the throne by long possession. It had, however, come to his ears that the young Tarquin was giving out that he was reigning without the assent of the people. He first secured the goodwill of the plebs by assigning to each householder a slice of the land which had been taken from the enemy. Then he was emboldened to put to them the question whether it was their will and resolve that he should reign.

He was acclaimed as king by a unanimous vote such as no king before him had obtained. The Assassination of the King. This action in no degree damped Tarquin's hopes of making his way to the throne, rather the reverse. He was a bold and aspiring youth, and his wife Tullia stimulated his restless ambition. He had seen that the granting of land to the commons was in defiance of the opinion of the senate, and he seized the opportunity it afforded him of traducing Servius and strengthening his own faction in that assembly.

So it came about that the Roman palace afforded an instance of the crime which tragic poets have depicted,[*](Sophocles in the Oedipus and Aeschylus in the Agamemnon ) with the result that the loathing felt

for kings hastened the advent of liberty, and the crown won by villainy was the last that was worn.

This Lucius Tarquinius-whether he was the son or the grandson of King Priscus Tarquinius is not clear; if I should give him as the son I should have the preponderance of authorities-had a brother, Arruns Tarquinius, a youth of gentle character. The two Tullias, the king's daughters, had, as I have already stated, married these two brothers; and they themselves were of utterly unlike dispositions.