n as they came thither, the public crier summoned them to attend
the tribune of the celeres [58], with which office Brutus happened to
be at the time invested. There a harangue was delivered by him, by no
means of the style and character which had been counterfeited by him
up to that day, concerning the violence and lust of Sextus Tarquinius,
the horrid violation of Lucretia and her lamentable death, the
bereavement of Tricipitinus,[59], in whose eyes the cause of his
daughter's death was more shameful and deplorable than that death
itself. To this was added the haughty insolence of the king himself,
and the sufferings and toils of the people, buried in the earth in the
task of cleansing ditches and sewers: he declared that Romans, the
conquerors of all the surrounding states, instead of warriors had
become labourers and stone-cutters. The unnatural murder of King
Servius Tullius was recalled, and the fact of his daughter having
driven over the body of her father in her impious chariot, and the
gods who avenge parents were invoked by him. By stating these and, I
believe, other facts still more shocking, which, though by no means
easy to be detailed by writers, the then heinous state of things
suggested, he so worked upon the already incensed multitude, that they
deprived the king of his authority, and ordered the banishment of
Lucius Tarquinius with his wife and children. He himself, having
selected and armed some of the younger men, who gave in their names as
volunteers, set out for the camp at Ardea to rouse the army against
the king: the command in the city he left to Lucretius, who had been
already appointed prefect of the city by the king. During this tumult
Tullia fled from her house, both men and women cursing her wherever
she went, and invoking upon her the wrath of the furies, the avengers
of parents.
News of these transactions having reached the camp, when the king,
alarmed at this sudden revolution, was proceeding to Rome to quell the
disturbances, Brutus--for he had had notice of his approach--turned
aside, to avoid meeting him; and much about the same time Brutus and
Tarquinius arrived by different routes, the one at Ardea, the other at
Rome. The gates were shut against Tarquin, and sentence of banishment
declared against him; the camp welcomed with great joy the deliverer
of the city, and the king's sons were expelled. Two of them followed
their father, and went into exile to Caere, a city of Etruria. Sex
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