ever afterwards was regarded in Rome; and above all by the enactment that the "king for sacrifice" (rex sacrorum)—whom they considered it their duty to create that the gods might not miss their accustomed mediator—should be disqualified from holding any further office, so that this official was at once the first in rank and the least in power of all the Roman magistrates. Along with the last king all the members of his gens were banished—a proof how close at that time the gentile ties still were. The Tarquinii transferred themselves to Cære, perhaps their ancient home (P. 132), where their family tomb has recently been discovered. In the room of one president holding office for life two annual rulers now were placed at the head of the Roman community.
This is all that can be looked upon as historically certain in reference to this important event.[1] It may easily be conceived that in a great community with extensive dominions like the Roman, the royal power, particularly when it had been in the same family for several generations, would be more capable of resistance, and the struggle would thus be keener, than in smaller states. There is, however, no certain indication of foreign states mingling in the struggle. The great war with Etruria (which, moreover, has been placed so close upon the expulsion of the Tarquins only perhaps in consequence of chronological confusion in the Roman annals) cannot be regarded as an intervention of Etruria in favour of a countryman who had been injured in Rome, for the very sufficient reason that the Etruscans, notwithstanding their complete victory, neither restored the Roman monarchy, nor even brought back the Tarquinian gens.
- ↑ The well-known fable for the most part refutes itself. To a considerable extent, it has been concocted for the explanation of surnames (Brutus, Poplicola, Scævola). But even its apparently historical ingredients are found, on closer examination, to have been invented. Of this character is the statement that Brutus was a captain of horse (tribunus celerum) and in that capacity proposed the decree of the people as to the banishment of the Tarquins: for, according to the earliest constitution of Rome, it is quite impossible that a mere tribune should have had the right to convoke the curies, when that right was not accorded to the Alter ego of the king (P. 82). The whole of this statement has evidently been invented with the view of furnishing a basis of legitimacy for the Roman republic; and the invention is a very miserable one, for the tribunus celerum is confounded with the entirely different magister equitum (P. 79), and then the right of convoking the centuries which pertained to the latter by virtue of his prætorian rank is made to apply to this assembly of the curies.
