fied with him (seeing
that they were butchered one after another, driven into exile, and
deprived of their property), what better prospects were held out to
the Latins? If they listened to him, they would depart thence, each to
his own home, and take no more notice of the day of meeting than he
who had proclaimed it. When this man, mutinous and full of daring, and
one who had obtained influence at home by such methods, was pressing
these and other observations to the same effect, Tarquin appeared on
the scene. This put an end to his harangue. All turned away from him
to salute Tarquin, who, on silence being proclaimed, being advised by
those next him to make some excuse for having come so late, said that
he had been chosen arbitrator between a father and a son: that, from
his anxiety to reconcile them, he had delayed: and, because that duty
had taken up that day, that on the morrow he would carry out what he
had determined. They say that he did not make even that observation
unrebuked by Turnus, who declared that no controversy could be more
quickly decided than one between father and son, and that it could be
settled in a few words--unless the son submitted to the father, he
would be punished.

The Arician withdrew from the meeting, uttering these reproaches
against the Roman king. Tarquin, feeling the matter much more sorely
than he seemed to, immediately set about planning the death of Turnus,
in order to inspire the Latins with the same terror as that with which
he had crushed the spirits of his own subjects at home: and because
he could not be put to death openly, by virtue of his authority, he
accomplished the ruin of this innocent man by bringing a false charge
against him. By means of some Aricians of the opposite party, he
bribed a servant of Turnus with gold, to allow a great number
of swords to be secretly brought into his lodging. When these
preparations had been completed in the course of a single night,
Tarquin, having summoned the chief of the Latins to him a little
before day, as if alarmed by some strange occurrence, said that
his delay of yesterday, which had been caused as it were by some
providential care of the gods, had been the means of preservation to
himself and to them; that he had been told that destruction was being
plotted by Turnus for him and the chiefs of the Latin peoples, that he
alone might obtain the government of the Latins. That he would have
attacked them yesterday at the meeting;