passage, and after placing in
it a bed, a light, and a table nearly full of foods, he brought
thither the unchaste woman escorted by a procession and having
introduced her alive into the room walled it up. From his institution
this plan of punishing those of the priestesses that do not keep their
virginity has continued to prevail. The men that outrage them have
their necks inserted in cloven pillars in the Forum, and then are
maltreated naked until they give up the ghost.

However, an attack was made upon Tarquinius by the children of Marcius
because he would not yield the sovereignty to them, but instead placed
a certain Tullius, borne to him by a slave woman, at the head of them
all. This more than anything else displeased the patricians. The young
men interested some of the latter class in their cause and formed a
plot against the king. They arrayed two men like rustics, equipped
with axes and scythes, and made them ready to attack him. So these
two, when they did not find Tarquinius in the Forum, went to the royal
court (pretending, of course, to have a dispute with each other) and
asked for admission to his presence. Their request was granted and
they began to make opposing arguments, and while Tarquinius was giving
his attention to one of them pleading his cause, the other slew him.

VII, 9.--Such was the end that befell Tarquinius who had ruled for
thirty-eight years. By the cooeperation of Tanaquil, wife of
Tarquinius, Tullius succeeded to the kingdom of Rome. He was the child
of a certain woman named Ocrisia, the wife of Spurius Tullius, a
Latin; she had been captured in the war and chosen by Tarquinius: she
had either become pregnant at home or conceived after her capture;
both stories are current. When Tullius had reached boyhood he went to
sleep on a chair once in the daytime and a quantity of fire seemed to
leap from his head. Tarquinius, seeing it, took an active interest in
the child and on his arriving at maturity had him enrolled among the
patricians and in the senate.

The murderers of Tarquinius were arrested and his wife and Tullius
learned the plan of the plot; but instead of making Tarquinius's death
known at once, they took him up and tended him (pretending that he was
still alive), and meantime exchanged mutual pledges that Tullius
should take the sovereignty but surrender it to Tanaquil's sons when
they became men. And when the multitude ran together and raised an
outcry, Tanaquil, leaning