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The History of RomeBook One · Chapter LX

Livy · D. Spillan, 1853

News of these transactions having reached the camp, when the king, alarmed at this sudden revolution, was going to Rome to quell the commotions, Brutus, for he had notice of his approach, turned out of the way, that he might not meet him; and much about the same time Brutus and Tarquin arrived by different routes, the one at Ardea, the other at Rome. The gates were shut against Tarquin, and an act of banishment passed against him; the deliverer of the state the camp received with great joy, and the king's sons were expelled. Two of them followed their father, and went into banishment to Cære, a city of Etruria. Sextus Tarquin, having gone to Gabii, as to his own kingdom, was slain by the avengers of the old feuds, which he had raised against himself by his rapines and murders. Lucius Tarquin the Proud reigned twenty-five years: the regal form of government continued from the building of the city to this period of its deliverance, two hundred and forty-four years. Two consuls, viz. Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, were elected by the prefect of the city at the comitia by centuries, according to the commentaries of Servius Tullius.

Whose reign

Tarquinius Superbus 534–510 BC — the years tradition gives him

Etruria — the country north of the Tiber.

How much of this is history

Book One covers two and a half centuries before any Roman was writing anything down, and Livy composed it four hundred years after the last event in it. He says in his own preface that what comes before the city’s founding is “rather adorned with poetic legends than founded on authentic records”. The towns on the map are real places; the reigns and the dates are tradition.

Text: Livy, The History of Rome, Book One, in D. Spillan’s translation for Bohn’s Classical Library, 1853 — public domain, from Project Gutenberg ebook 19725, set unaltered. Spillan’s own footnotes are his and are not printed; his argument to the book is on the title page and labelled as his. All 60 chapters, numbering checked. Map: Latium, from Natural Earth 10m land, lakes and the Tiber, public domain, clipped and projected at build time; town coordinates matched against the Pleiades gazetteer (CC-BY) — Pleiades often holds a feature within a town rather than the town itself, so each was seeded with an independent position and the nearest record accepted only within 12 km. Alba Longa and Laurentum are drawn hollow and Caenina and Suessa Pometia are not drawn at all, because their sites are not agreed.