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And what was the end of the kings themselves? Of Romulus, a
flattering legend tells us that he was assumed into heaven. But
certain Roman historians relate that he was torn in pieces by the
senate for his ferocity, and that a man, Julius Proculus, was
suborned to give out that Romulus had appeared to him, and through him
commanded the Roman people to worship him as a god; and that in this
way the people, who were beginning to resent the action of the senate,
were quieted and pacified. For an eclipse of the sun had also
happened; and this was attributed to the divine power of Romulus by
the ignorant multitude, who did not know that it was brought about by
the fixed laws of the sun's course: though this grief of the sun might
rather have been considered proof that Romulus had been slain, and
that the crime was indicated by this deprivation of the sun's light;
as, in truth, was the case when the Lord was crucified through the
cruelty and impiety of the Jews. For it is sufficiently demonstrated
that this latter obscuration of the sun did not occur by the natural
laws of the heavenly bodies, because it was then the Jewish
Passover, which is held only at full moon, whereas natural eclipses
of the sun happen only at the last quarter of the moon. Cicero, too,
shows plainly enough that the apotheosis of Romulus was imaginary
rather than real, when, even while he is praising him in one of
Scipio's remarks in the De Republica, he says: "Such a
reputation had he acquired, that when he suddenly disappeared during an
eclipse of the sun, he was supposed to have been assumed into the
number of the gods, which could be supposed of no mortal who had not
the highest reputation for virtue." By these words, "he suddenly
disappeared," we are to understand that he was mysteriously made away
with by the violence either of the tempest or of a murderous assault.
For their other writers speak not only of an eclipse, but of a sudden
storm also, which certainly either afforded opportunity for the crime,
or itself made an end of Romulus. And of Tullus Hostilius, who was
the third king of Rome, and who was himself destroyed by lightning,
Cicero in the same book says, that "he was not supposed to have been
deified by this death, possibly because the Romans were unwilling W
vulgarize the promotion they were assured or persuaded of in the case of
Romulus, lest they should bring it into contempt by gratuitously
assigning it to all and sundry." In one of his invectives, too, he
says, in round terms, "The founder of this city, Romulus, we have
raised to immortality and divinity by kindly celebrating his
services;" implying that his deification was not real, but reputed,
and called so by courtesy on account of his virtues. In the dialogue
Hortensius. too, while speaking of the regular eclipses of the sun,
he says that they "produce the same darkness as covered the death of
Romulus, which happened during an eclipse of the sun." Here you see
he does not at all shrink from speaking of his "death," for Cicero
was more of a reasoner than an eulogist.
The other kings of Rome, too, with the exception of Numa Pompilius
and Ancus Marcius, who died natural deaths, what horrible ends they
had! Tullus Hostilius, the conqueror and destroyer of Alba, was,
as I said, himself and all his house consumed by lightning. Priscus
Tarquinius was slain by his predecessor's sons. Servius Tullius was
foully murdered by his son-in-law Tarquinius Superbus, who
succeeded him on the throne. Nor did so flagrant a parricide committed
against Rome's best king drive from their altars and shrines those
gods who were said to have been moved by Paris' adultery to treat poor
Troy in this style, and abandon it to the fire and sword of the
Greeks. Nay, the very Tarquin who had murdered, was allowed to
succeed his father-in-law. And this infamous parricide, during the
reign he had secured by murder, was allowed to triumph in many
victorious wars, and to build the Capitol from their spoils; the gods
meanwhile not departing, but abiding, and abetting, and suffering
their king Jupiter to preside and reign over them in that very splendid
Capitol, the work of a parricide. For he did not build the Capitol
in the days of his innocence, and then suffer banishment for subsequent
crimes; but to that reign during which he built the Capitol, he won
his way by unnatural crime. And when he was afterwards banished by the
Romans, and forbidden the city, it was not for his own but his son's
wickedness in the affair of Lucretia, a crime perpetrated not only
without his cognizance, but in his absence. For at that time he was
besieging Ardea, and fighting Rome's battles; and we cannot say
what he would have done had he been aware of his son's crime.
Notwithstanding, though his opinion was neither inquired into nor
ascertained, the people stripped him of royalty; and when he returned
to Rome with his army, it was admitted, but he was excluded,
abandoned by his troops, and the gates shut in his face. And yet,
after he had appealed to the neighboring states, and tormented the
Romans with calamitous but unsuccessful wars, and when he was deserted
by the ally on whom he most depended, despairing of regaining the
kingdom, he lived a retired and quiet life for fourteen years, as it
is reported, in Tusculum, a Roman town, where he grew old in his
wife's company, and at last terminated his days in a much more
desirable fashion than his father-in-law, who had perished by the
hand of his son-in-law; his own daughter abetting, if report be
true. And this Tarquin the Romans called, not the Cruel, nor the
Infamous, but the Proud; their own pride perhaps resenting his
tyrannical airs. So little did they make of his murdering their best
king, his own father-in-law, that they elected him their own king.
I wonder if it was not even more criminal in them to reward so
bountifully so great a criminal. And yet there was no word of the gods
abandoning the altars; unless, perhaps, some one will say in defence
of the gods, that they remained at Rome for the purpose of punishing
the Romans, rather than of aiding and profiting them, seducing them
by empty victories, and wearing them out by severe wars. Such was the
life of the Romans under the kings during the much-praised epoch of
the state which extends to the expulsion of Tarquinius Superbus in the
243rd year, during which all those victories, which were bought
with so much blood and such disasters, hardly pushed Rome's dominion
twenty miles from the city; a territory which would by no means bear
comparison with that of any petty Gaetulian state.
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