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To this epoch let us add also that of which Sallust says, that it was
ordered with justice and moderation, while the fear of Tarquin and of
a war with Etruria was impending. For so long as the Etrurians aided
the efforts of Tarquin to regain the throne, Rome was convulsed with
distressing war. And therefore he says that the state was ordered with
justice and moderation, through the pressure of fear, not through the
influence of equity. And in this very brief period, how calamitous a
year was that in which consuls were first created, when the kingly
power was abolished! They did not fulfill their term of office. For
Junius Brutus deprived his colleague Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus,
and banished him from the city; and shortly after he himself fell in
battle, at once slaying and slain, having formerly put to death his
own sons and his brothers-in-law, because he had discovered that they
were conspiring to restore Tarquin. It is this deed that Virgil
shudders to record, even while he seems to praise it; for when he
says: "And call his own rebellious seed For menaced liberty to
bleed," he immediately exclaims, "Unhappy father! howsoe'er The
deed be judged by after days;" that is to say, let posterity judge
the deed as they please, let them praise and extol the father who slew
his sons, he is unhappy. And then he adds,as if to console so
unhappy a man: "His country's love shall all o'erbear, And
unextinguished thirst of praise."
In the tragic end of Brutus, who slew his own sons, and though he
slew his enemy, Tarquin's son, yet could not survive him, but was
survived by Tarquin the elder, does not the innocence of his colleague
Collatinus seem to be vindicated, who, though a good citizen,
suffered the same punishment as Tarquin himself, when that tyrant was
banished? For Brutus himself is said to have been a relative of
Tarquin. But Collatinus had the misfortune to bear not only the
blood, but the name of Tarquin. To change his name, then, not his
country, would have been his fit penalty: to abridge his name by this
word, and be called simply L. Collatinus. But he was not compelled
to lose what he could lose without detriment, but was stripped of the
honor of the first consulship, and was banished from the land he
loved. Is this, then, the glory of Brutus, this injustice, alike
detestable and profitless to the republic? Was it to this he was
driven by "his country's love, and unextinguished thirst of
praise?"
When Tarquin the tyrant was expelled, L. Tarquinius Collatinus,
the husband of Lucretia, was created consul along with Brutus. How
justly the people acted, in looking more to the character than the name
of a citizen! How unjustly Brutus acted, in depriving of honor and
country his colleague in that new office, whom he might have deprived
of his name, if it were so offensive to him! Such were the ills,
such the disasters, which fell out when the government was "ordered
with justice and moderation." Lucretius, too, who succeeded
Brutus, was carried off by disease before the end of that same year.
So P. Valerius, who succeeded Collatinus, and M. Horatius,
who filled the vacancy occasioned by the death of Lucretius, completed
that disastrous and funereal year, which had five consuls. Such was
the year in which the Roman republic inaugurated the new honor and
office of the consulship.
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