Delphi Complete Works of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 79)

by Dionysius of Halicarnassus

  [40.1] Such was the death which fell to the lot of Tullius after he had reigned forty-four years. The Romans say that this man was the first who altered ancestral customs and laws by receiving the sovereignty, not from the senate and the people jointly, like all the former kings, but from the people alone, the poorer sort of whom he had won over by bribery and many other ways of courting popular favour; and this is true. [2] For before this time, upon the death of a king it was the custom for the people to grant to the senate authority to establish such a form of government as they should think fit; and the senate created interreges, who appointed the best man king, whether he was a native Roman or a foreigner. And if the senate approved of the one so chosen and the people by their votes confirmed the choice, and if the auguries also gave their sanction to it, he assumed the sovereignty; but if any one of these formalities was lacking, they named a second, and then a third, if it so happened that the second was likewise not found unobjectionable by both men and gods. [3] Tullius, on the contrary, at first assumed the guise of royal guardian, as I said before, after which he gained the affections of the people by certain ingratiating acts and was appointed king by them alone. But as he proved to be a man of mildness and moderation, by his subsequent actions he put an end to the complaints caused by his not having observed the laws in all respects, and gave occasion for many to believe that, if he had not been made away with too soon, he would have changed the form of government to a democracy. [4] And they say it was for this reason chiefly that some of the patricians joined in the conspiracy against him; that, being unable by any other means to overthrow his power, they took Tarquinius as an ally in their undertaking and aided him in gaining the sovereignty, it being their wish not only to weaken the power of the plebeians, which had received no small addition from the political measures of Tullius, but also to recover their own former dignity.

  [5] The death of Tullius having occasioned a great tumult and lamentation throughout the whole city, Tarquinius was afraid lest, if the body should be carried through the Forum, according to the custom of the Romans, adorned with the royal robes and the other marks of honour usual in royal funerals, some attack might be made against him by the populace before he had firmly established his authority; and accordingly he would not permit any of the usual ceremonies to be performed in his honour. But the wife of Tullius, who was daughter to Tarquinius, the former king, with a few of her friends carried the body out of the city at night as if it had been that of some ordinary person; and after uttering many lamentations over the fate both of herself and of her husband and heaping countless imprecations upon her son-in-law and her daughter, she buried the body in the ground. [6] Then, returning home from the sepulchre, she lived but one day after the burial, during the following night. The manner of her death was not generally known. Some said that in her grief she lost all desire to live and died by her own hand; others, that she was put to death by her son-in-law and her daughter because of her compassion and affection for her husband. For the reasons mentioned, then, the body of Tullius could not be given a royal funeral and a stately monument; but his achievements have won lasting remembrance for all time. [7] And it was made clear by another prodigy that this man was dear to the gods; in consequence of which that fabulous and incredible opinion I have already mentioned concerning his birth also came to be regarded by many as true. For in the temple of Fortune which he himself had built there stood a gilded wooden statue of Tullius, and when a conflagration occurred and everything else was destroyed, this statue alone remained uninjured by the flames. And even to this day, although the temple itself and all the objects in it, which were restored to their formed condition after the fire, are obviously the products of modern art, the statue, as aforetime, is of ancient workmanship; for it still remains an object of veneration by the Romans. Concerning Tullius these are all the facts that have been handed down to us.

  [41.1] He was succeeded in the sovereignty over the Romans by Lucius Tarquinius, who obtained it, not in accordance with the laws, but by arms, in the fourth year of the sixty-first Olympiad (the one in which Agatharchus of Corcyra won the foot-race), Thericles being archon at Athens. [2] This man, despising not only the populace, but the patricians as well, by whom he had been brought to power, confounded and abolished the customs, the laws, and the whole native form of government, by which the former kings had ordered the commonwealth, and transformed his rule into an avowed tyranny. [3] And first he placed about his person a guard of very daring men, both natives and foreigners, armed with swords and spears, who camped round the palace at night and attended him in the daytime wherever he went, effectually securing him from the attempts of conspirators. Secondly, he did not appear in public often or at stated times, but only rarely and unexpectedly; and he transacted the public business at home, for the most part, and in the presence of none but his most intimate friends, and only occasionally in the Forum. [4] To none who sought an audience would he grant it unless he himself had sent for them; and even to those who did gain access to him he was not gracious or mild, but, as is the way with tyrants, harsh and irascible, and his aspect was terrifying rather than genial. His decisions in controversies relating to contracts he rendered, not with regard to justice and law, but according to his own moods. For these reasons the Romans gave him the surname of Superbus, which in our language means “the haughty”; and his grandfather they called Priscus, or, as we should say, “the elder,” since both his names were the same as those of the younger man.

  [42.1] When he thought he was now in secure possession of the sovereignty, he suborned the basest of his friends to bring charges against many of the prominent men and place them on trial for their lives. He began with such as were hostile to him and resented his driving of Tullius from power; and next he accused all those whom he thought to be aggrieved by the change and those who had great riches. [2] When the accusers brought these men to trial, charging them with various fictitious crimes but chiefly with conspiring against the king, it was by Tarquinius himself, sitting as judge, that the charges were heard. Some of the accused he condemned to death and others to banishment, and seizing the property of both the slain and the exiled, he assigned some small part to the accusers but retained the largest part for himself. [3] The result was therefore bound to be that many influential men, knowing the motives underlying the plots against them, voluntarily, before they could be convicted of the charges brought against them, left the city to the tyrant, and the number of these was much greater than of the others. There were some who were even seized in their homes or in the country and secretly murdered by him, men of note, and not even their bodies were seen again. [4] After he had destroyed the best part of the senate by death or by exile for life, he constituted another senate himself by working his own followers into the honours of the men who had disappeared; nevertheless, not even these men were permitted by him to do or say anything but what he himself commanded. [5] Consequently, when the senators who were left of those who had been enrolled in the senate under Tullius and who had hitherto been at odds with the plebeians and had expected the change in the form of government to turn out to their advantage (for Tarquinius had held out such promises to them with a view of deluding and tricking them) now found that they had no longer any share in the government, but that they too, as well as the plebeians, had been deprived of their freedom of speech, although they lamented their fate and suspected that things would be still more terrible in the future than they were at the moment, yet, having no power to prevent what was going on, they were forced to acquiesce in the existing state of affairs.

  [43.1] The plebeians, seeing this, looked upon them as justly punished and in their simplicity rejoiced at their discomfiture, imagining that the tyranny would be burdensome to the senators alone and would involve no danger to themselves. Nevertheless, to them also came even more hardships not long afterwards. For the laws drawn up by Tullius, by which they all received justice alike from each other and by which they were secured from being injur
ed by the patricians, as before, in their contracts with them, were all abolished by Tarquinius, who did not leave even the tables on which the laws were written, but ordered these also to be removed from the Forum and destroyed. [2] After this he abolished the taxes based on the census and revived the original form of taxation; and whenever he required money, the poorest citizen contributed the same amount as the richest. This measure ruined a large part of the plebeians, since every man was obliged to pay ten drachmae as his individual share of the very first tax. He also forbade the holding in future of any of the assemblies to which hitherto the inhabitants of the villages, the members of the curiae, or the residents of a neighbourhood, both in the city and in the country, had resorted in order to perform religious ceremonies and sacrifices in common, lest large numbers of people, meeting together, should form secret conspiracies to overthrow his power. [3] He had spies scattered about in many places who secretly inquired into everything that was said and done, while remaining undiscovered by most persons; and by insinuating themselves into the conversation of their neighbours and sometimes by reviling the tyrant themselves they sounded every man’s sentiments. Afterwards they informed the tyrant of all who were dissatisfied with the existing state of affairs; and the punishments of those who were found guilty were severe and relentless.

  [44.1] Nor was he satisfied merely with these illegal vexations of the plebeians, but, after selecting from among them such as were loyal to himself and fit for war, he compelled the rest to labour on the public works in the city; for he believed that monarchs are exposed to the greatest danger when the worst and the most needy of the citizens live in idleness, and at the same time he was eager to complete during his own reign the works his grandfather had left half finished, namely, to extend to the river the drainage canals which the other had begun to dig and also to surround the Circus, which had been carried up no higher than the foundations, with covered porticos. [2] At these undertakings all the poor laboured, receiving from him but a moderate allowance of grain. Some of them were employed in quarrying stone, others in hewing timber, some in driving the wagons that transported these materials, and others in carrying the burdens themselves upon their shoulders, still others in digging the subterranean drains and constructing the arches over them and in erecting the porticos and serving the various artisans who were thus employed; and smiths, carpenters and masons were taken from their private undertakings and kept at work in the service of the public. [3] Thus the people, being worn out by these works, had no rest; so that the patricians, seeing their hardships and servitude, rejoiced in their turn and forgot their own miseries. Yet neither of them attempted to put a stop to these proceedings.

  [45.1] Tarquinius, considering that those rulers who have not got their power legally but have obtained it by arms require a body-guard, not of natives only, but also of foreigners, earnestly endeavoured to gain the friendship of the most illustrious and most powerful man of the whole Latin nation, by giving his daughter to him in marriage. This man was Octavius Mamilius, who traced his lineage back to Telegonus, the son of Ulysses and Circe; he lived in the city of Tusculum and was looked upon as a man of singular sagacity in political matters and a competent military commander. [2] When Tarquinius had gained the friendship of this man and through him had won over the chief men at the head of affairs in each city, he resolved then at last to try his strength in warfare in the open and to lead an expedition against the Sabines, who refused to obey his orders and looked upon themselves as released from the terms of their treaty upon the death of Tullius, with whom they had made it. [3] After he had taken this resolution he sent messengers to invite to the council at Ferentinum those who were accustomed to meet together there on behalf of the Latin nation, and appointed a day, intimating that he wished to consult with them concerning some important matters of mutual interest. [4] The Latins, accordingly, appeared, but Tarquinius, who had summoned them, did not come at the time appointed. They waited for a long time and the majority of them regarded his behaviour as an insult. Among them was a certain man, named Turnus Herdonius, who lived in the city of Corilla and was powerful by reason of both of his riches and of his friends, valiant in war and not without ability in political debate; he was not only at variance with Mamilius, owing to their rivalry for power in the state, but also, on account of Mamilius, an enemy to Tarquinius, because the king had seen fit to take the other for his son-in-law in preference to himself. This man now inveighed at length against Tarquinius, enumerating all the other actions of the man which seemed to shown evidence of arrogance and presumption, and laying particular stress upon his not appearing at the assembly which he himself had summoned, when all the rest were present. [5] But Mamilius attempted to excuse Tarquinius, attributing his delay to some unavoidable cause, and asked that the assembly might be adjourned to the next day; and the presiding officers of the Latins were prevailed on to do so.

  [46.1] The next day Tarquinius appeared and, the assembly having been called together, he first excused his delay in a few words and at once entered upon a discussion of the supremacy, which he insisted belonged to him by right, since Tarquinius, his grandfather, had held it, having acquired it by war; and he offered in evidence the treaties made by the various cities with Tarquinius. [2] After saying a great deal in favour of his claim and concerning the treaties, and promising to confer great advantages on the cities in case they should continue in their friendship, he at last endeavoured to persuade them to join him in an expedition against the Sabines. [3] When he had ceased speaking, Turnus, the man who had censured him for his failure to appear in time, came forward and sought to dissuade the council from yielding to him the supremacy, both on the ground that it did not belong to him by right and also because it would not be in the interest of the Latins to yield it to him; and he dwelt long upon both these points. He said that the treaties they had made with the grandfather of Tarquinius, when they granted to him the supremacy, had been terminated after his death, no clause having been added to those treaties providing that the same grant should descend to his posterity; and he showed that the man who claimed the right to inherit the grants made to his grandfather was of all men the most lawless and most wicked, and he recounted the things he had done in order to possess himself of the sovereignty over the Romans. [4] After enumerating many terrible charges against him, he ended by informing them that Tarquinius did not hold even the kingship over the Romans in accordance with the laws by taking it with their consent, like the former kings, but had prevailed by arms and violence; and that, having established a tyranny, he was putting some of the citizens to death, banishing others, despoiling others of their estates, and taking from all of them their liberty both of speech and of action. He declared it would be an act of great folly and madness to hope for anything good and beneficent from a wicked and impious nature and to imagine that a man who had not spared such as were nearest to him both in blood and friendship would spare those who were strangers to him; and he advised them, as long as they had not yet accepted the yoke of slavery, to fight to the end against accepting it, judging from the misfortunes of others what it would be their own fate to suffer.

  [47.1] After Turnus had thus inveighed against Tarquinius and most of those present had been greatly moved by his words, Tarquinius asked that the following day might be set for his defence. His request was granted, and when the assembly had been dismissed, he summoned his most intimate friends and consulted with them how he ought to handle the situation. These began to suggest to him the arguments he should use in his defence and to run over the means by which he should endeavour to win back the favour of the majority; but Tarquinius himself declared that the situation did not call for any such measures, and gave it as his own opinion that he ought not to attempt to refute the accusations, but rather to destroy the accuser himself. [2] When all had praised this opinion, he arranged with them the details of the attack and then set about carrying out a plot that was least likely to be foreseen by any man and guarded against. Seek
ing out the most evil among the servants of Turnus who conducted his pack animals with the baggage and bribing them with money, he persuaded them to take from him a large number of swords at nightfall and put them away in the baggage-chests where they would not be in sight. [3] The next day, when the assembly had convened, Tarquinius came forward and said that his defence against the accusations was a brief one, and he proposed that his accuser himself should be the judge of all the charges. “For, councillors,” he said, “Turnus here, as a judge, himself acquitted me of everything of which he now accuses me, when he desired my daughter in marriage. [4] But since he was thought unworthy of the marriage, as was but natural (for who in his senses would have refused Mamilius, the man of highest birth and greatest merit among the Latins, and consented to take for his son-in-law this man who cannot trace his family back even five generations?), in resentment for this slight he has now come to accuse me. Whereas, if he knew me to be such a man as he now charges, he ought not to have desired me then for a father-in-law; and if he thought me a good man when he asked me for my daughter in marriage, he ought not now to traduce me as a wicked man. [5] So much concerning myself. As for you, councillors, who are running the greatest of dangers, it is not for you to consider now whether I am a good or a bad man (for this you may inquire into afterwards) but to provide both for your own safety and for the liberty of your respective cities. For a plot is being formed by this fine demagogue against you who are the chief men of your cities and are at the head of affairs; and he is prepared, after he has put the most prominent of you to death, to attempt to seize the sovereignty over the Latins, and has come here for that purpose. [6] I do not say this from conjecture but from my certain knowledge, having last night received information of it from one of the accomplices in the conspiracy. And I will give you an incontestible proof of what I say, if you will go to his lodging, by showing you the arms that are concealed there.”