swam over the river, amid the darts of the enemy, at the head
of a band of maidens, and brought them all back in safety to their
relations at Rome. When news of this was brought to the king, at
first, furious with rage, he sent deputies to Rome to demand the
hostage Claelia, saying that he did not set great store by the rest:
afterward, his feelings being changed to admiration, he said that
this deed surpassed those of men like Cocles and Mucius, and further
declared that, as he would consider the treaty broken if the hostage
were not delivered up, so, if she were given up, he would send her
back unharmed and unhurt to her friends. Both sides kept faith: the
Romans restored their pledge of peace according to treaty: and with
the Etruscan king valour found not only security, but also honour;
and, after praising the maiden, he promised to give her, as a present,
half the hostages, allowing her to choose whom she pleased. When they
had all been led forth, she is said to have picked out those below the
age of puberty, a choice which both reflected honour upon her maiden
delicacy, and was one likely to be approved of by consent of the
hostages themselves--that those who were of such an age as was most
exposed to injury should above all others be delivered from the enemy.
Peace being renewed, the Romans rewarded this instance of bravery
uncommon in a woman with an uncommon kind of honour: an equestrian
statue, which, representing a maiden sitting on horseback, was erected
at the top of the Via Sacra.[14]

The custom handed down from the ancients, and which has continued down
to our times among other usages at public sales, that of selling
the goods of King Porsina, is inconsistent with this account of so
peaceful a departure of the Etruscan king from the city. The origin
of this custom must either have arisen during the war, and not been
abandoned in time of peace, or it must have grown from a milder
beginning than the form of expression seems, on the face of it, to
indicate, of selling the goods as if taken from an enemy. Of the
accounts handed down, the most probable is, that Porsina, when
retiring from the Janiculum, made a present to the Romans of his camp
rich with stores of provisions conveyed from the neighbouring fertile
fields of Etruria, as the city was then exhausted owing to the long
siege: that then, to prevent its contents being plundered as if it
belonged to an enemy when the people were admitted, they were sol