Book contents
- Frontmatter
- TO HIS MAJESTY FREDERIC WILLIAM THE THIRD, KING OF PRUSSIA
- PREFACE
- Contents
- INTRODUCTION
- ANCIENT ITALY
- THE PRELIMINARY HISTORY OF ROME
- ROME
- Various Traditions about the Origin of the City
- Romulus and Numa
- Beginning and Nature of the Earliest History
- The Era from the Foundation of the City
- On the Secular Cycle
- The Beginning of Rome and its Earliest Tribes
- The Patrician Houses and the Curies
- The Senate, the Interrexes, and the Kings
- Tullus Hostilius and Ancus
- The Lay of L. Tarquinius Priscus and Servius Tullius
- Examination of the Stories of L. Tarquinius and Servius Tullius
- The Completion of the City of Rome
- The Six Equestrian Centuries
- The Commonalty and the Plebeian Tribes
- The Centuries
- L. Tarquinius the Tyrant and the Banishment of the Tarquins
- Commentary on the Story of the Last Tarquinius
- The Beginning of the Republic and the Treaty with Carthage
- The War with Porsenna
- The Period down to the Death of Tarquinius
- The Dictatorship
- The Commonalty before the Secession, and the Nexi
L. Tarquinius the Tyrant and the Banishment of the Tarquins
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2011
- Frontmatter
- TO HIS MAJESTY FREDERIC WILLIAM THE THIRD, KING OF PRUSSIA
- PREFACE
- Contents
- INTRODUCTION
- ANCIENT ITALY
- THE PRELIMINARY HISTORY OF ROME
- ROME
- Various Traditions about the Origin of the City
- Romulus and Numa
- Beginning and Nature of the Earliest History
- The Era from the Foundation of the City
- On the Secular Cycle
- The Beginning of Rome and its Earliest Tribes
- The Patrician Houses and the Curies
- The Senate, the Interrexes, and the Kings
- Tullus Hostilius and Ancus
- The Lay of L. Tarquinius Priscus and Servius Tullius
- Examination of the Stories of L. Tarquinius and Servius Tullius
- The Completion of the City of Rome
- The Six Equestrian Centuries
- The Commonalty and the Plebeian Tribes
- The Centuries
- L. Tarquinius the Tyrant and the Banishment of the Tarquins
- Commentary on the Story of the Last Tarquinius
- The Beginning of the Republic and the Treaty with Carthage
- The War with Porsenna
- The Period down to the Death of Tarquinius
- The Dictatorship
- The Commonalty before the Secession, and the Nexi
Summary
This destruction was the act of the usurper, this the price for which his accomplices allowed him to rule as king, without even the bare show of a confirmation by the curies. Every right and privilege conferred by Servius upon the commonalty was swept away; the assemblages at sacrifices and festivals, which had tended more than all other things to form them into united bodies, were prohibited; the equality of civil rights was abolished again, and the right of seizing the person for debt reestablished: the rich plebeians, like the sojourners, were subjected to arbitrary taxation: the poor were kept at task-work with sorry wages and scanty food, and many were driven by their hardships to put an end to themselves.
Soon however the oppressed had the wretched solace of seeing the exultation of their oppressors turned into dismay. The senators and men of rank were, as under the Greek tyrants, the nearest object for the mistrust and the cupidity of the usurper: after the manner of those tyrants he had formed a body-guard, with which he exercised his sway at pleasure. Many lost their lives; others were banished, and their fortunes confiscated: the vacant places were not filled up: and even this senate, insignificant as its small number made it, was not called together.
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- Information
- The History of Rome , pp. 426 - 447Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1828