The narrative, which since the loss of the ancient Annals has chanced to acquire the character of a traditional history, relates that, after the battle of the forest of Arsia, the Tarquins, in order to obtain more powerful succour, repaired to the court of Lar Porsenna, the king of Clusium; and that he, when his intercession had been rejected, led his army against Rome in their behalf. But this cannot possibly have gained universal currency: Cicero, who yet was very well acquainted with the celebrated legend of Porsenna and Scævola, says, neither the Veientines nor the Latins were able to replace Tarquinius on the Roman throne. So that he either held the Veientine war in which Brutus falls, to be the same with Porsenna's: or he discriminated between the latter, as a war of conquest, and the attempts of the neighbouring states to place the government of Rome in the hands of the man who had thrown himself on their protection, and who was to pay them dear for it. And such no doubt is the older and genuine representation.

This narrative then makes the Etruscans under Porsenna march singly against Rome: and so the story runs in Livy: it is by a palpable forgery that in Dionysius we find Mamilius and the Latins taking part with him: the son-in-law of Tarquinius forsooth could not possibly remain inactive.