f fear, should, by receiving the Tarquins into the city, accept
peace even if purchased with slavery. Many conciliatory concessions were
therefore granted to the people by the senate during that period. Their
attention, in the first place, was directed to the markets, and persons
were sent, some to the Volscians, others to Cumae, to buy up corn. The
privilege[76] of selling salt, also, because it was farmed at a high
rent, was all taken into the hands of government,[77] and withdrawn from
private individuals; and the people were freed from port-duties and
taxes; that the rich, who were adequate to bearing the burden, should
contribute; that the poor paid tax enough if they educated their
children. This indulgent care of the fathers accordingly kept the whole
state in such concord amid the subsequent severities in the siege and
famine, that the highest abhorred the name of king not more than the
lowest; nor was any single individual afterwards so popular by
intriguing practices, as the whole senate then was by their excellent
government.

[Footnote 75: _Lar_. This is generally understood to have been a title
of honour equivalent to our term _Lord_.]

[Footnote 76: _Arbitrium_ signifies not only the "privilege," but the
"rent" paid for such privilege, or right of monopoly.]

[Footnote 77: _Was all taken into the hands of government_. In my
version of this passage I have conformed to the emendation of the
original first proposed by Gronovius, and admitted by Stroth and Bekker;
scil. _in publicum omne sumptum_.--They did not let these salt-works by
auction, but took them into their own management, and carried them on by
means of persons employed to work on the public account. These
salt-works, first established at Ostia by Ancus, were, like other public
property, farmed out to the publicans. As they had a high rent to pay,
the price of salt was raised in proportion; but now the patricians, to
curry favour with the plebeians, did not let the salt-pits to private
tenants, but kept them in the hands of public labourers, to collect all
the salt for the public use; and appointed salesmen to retail it to the
people at a cheaper rate. See Stocker's ed.]

10. Some parts seemed secured by the walls, others by the interposition
of the Tiber. The Sublician bridge well nigh afforded a passage to the
enemy, had there not been one man, Horatius Cocles, (that defence the
fortune of Rome had on that day,) who, happening to be posted on