these and other terms, she spurs on the young man; nor
can she herself rest; (indignant) that when Tanaquil, a foreign woman,
could achieve so great a project, as to bestow two successive thrones on
her husband, and then on her son-in-law, she, sprung from royal blood,
should have no weight in bestowing and taking away a kingdom.
Tarquinius, driven on by these frenzied instigations of the woman,
began to go round and solicit the patricians, especially those of the
younger families;[59] reminded them of his father's kindness, and
claimed a return for it; enticed the young men by presents; increased
his interest, as well by making magnificent promises on his own part, as
by inveighing against the king at every opportunity. At length, as soon
as the time seemed convenient for accomplishing his object, he rushed
into the forum, accompanied by a party of armed men; then, whilst all
were struck with dismay, seating himself on the throne before the
senate-house, he ordered the fathers to be summoned to the senate-house
by the crier to attend king Tarquinius. They assembled immediately, some
being already prepared for the occasion, some through fear, lest their
not having come might prove detrimental to them, astounded at the
novelty and strangeness of the matter, and considering that it was now
all over with Servius. Then Tarquinius, commencing his invectives
against his immediate ancestors: "that a slave, and born of a slave,
after the untimely death of his parent, without an interregnum being
adopted, as on former occasions, without any comitia (being held),
without the suffrages of the people, or the sanction of the fathers, he
had taken possession of the kingdom as the gift of a woman. That so
born, so created king, ever a favourer of the most degraded class, to
which he himself belongs, through a hatred of the high station of
others, he had taken their land from the leading men of the state and
divided it among the very meanest; that he had laid all the burdens,
which were formerly common, on the chief members of the community; that
he had instituted the census, in order that the fortune of the wealthier
citizens might be conspicuous to (excite) public envy, and that all was
prepared whence he might bestow largesses on the most needy, whenever he
might please."

[Footnote 59: _Younger families_. These had been brought into the
senate, as we have seen, by Tarquinius Priscus, and consequently
favoured the Tarquinian interes