Publicola

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. I. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1914.

The fourth temple, which is now standing on the same site as the others, was both completed and consecrated by Domitian. It is said that Tarquin expended upon its foundations forty thousand pounds of silver. But time greatest wealth now attributed to any private citizen of Rome would not pay the cost of the gilding alone of the present temple, which was more than twelve thousand talents.[*](For purposes of comparison a talent may be reckoned as worth £250, or $1200.)

Its pillars are of Pentelic marble,[*](Pentelé was an Attic deme on the N.E. edge of the Athenian plain, near which excellent marble was quarried from the mountain. This was called Brilessus in earlier times, then Pentelicus.) and their thickness was once most happily proportioned to their length; for we saw them at Athens. But when they were recut and scraped at Rome, they did not gain as much in polish as they lost in symmetry and beauty, and they now look too slender and thin.

However, if anyone who is amazed at the costliness of the Capitol had seen a single colonnade in the palace of Domitian, or a basilica or a bath, or the apartments for his concubines, then, as Epicharmus says to the spendthrift,

  1. ’Tis not beneficent thou art; thou art diseased; thy mania is to give,
so he would have been moved to say to Domitian: ’Tis not pious, nor nobly ambitious that thou art; thou art diseased; thy mania is to build; like the famous Midas, thou desirest that every thing become gold and stone at thy touch. So much, then, on this head.

But to return to Tarquin, after the great battle in which he lost his son in a duel with Brutus, he fled for refuge to Clusium, and became a suppliant of Lars Porsena, the most powerful king in Italy, who was thought also to be a man of worth and noble ambitions. He promised Tarquin his aid and assistance. So in the first place he sent to Rome and ordered them to receive Tarquin as their king. Then when the Romans refused, he declared war upon them, proclaimed the time and place of his attack, and marched thither with a great force.[*](Cf. Livy, ii. 9. )

Publicola was chosen consul for the second time, in his absence, and Titus Lucretius as his colleague. Returning, therefore, to Rome, and wishing, in the first place, to surpass Porsena in the loftiness of his spirit, he built the city of Sigliuria, although his adversary was already near at hand. After he had fortified it at great expense, he sent to it a colony of seven hundred men, indicating that he had no concern or fear about the war.