History of Rome

​Then, care was taken of divine matters; and because certain public sacrifices had been customarily performed by the kings themselves, lest there should be a lack of kings anywhere, they create a ‘king of sacrifices’.

​They subjected this priesthood to the pontifex, lest the honor added to the name should in any way obstruct liberty, which was then their first care.

​Indeed, I am inclined to think that they may have gone too far in securing it on all sides and in the smallest matters. For the name of the other consul, although he gave no other offense, was hated by the state: [people said that] the Tarquinii had become too accustomed to kingship; the beginning had been made by Priscus; Servius Tullius had reigned next; and even though no interval had occurred, Tarquinius Superbus, not forgetting the kingdom as if it belonged to another, had reclaimed it by crime and violence as the inheritance of his gens; now that Superbus was expelled, the power was in the hands of Collatinus; the Tarquinii did not know how to live as private citizens. The name did not please them, it was dangerous to liberty.

​At first, this talk, gradually testing the minds of the citizens, was spread through the whole state, and Brutus summons the plebs, anxious with suspicion, to an assembly.

​There, first of all, he recites the oath of the people that they would suffer no man to reign nor anyone to be at Rome from whom danger to liberty might arise. He says that this must be guarded with all their might, and nothing that pertains to it should be neglected. He says that he speaks unwillingly for the sake of a man, and would not have spoken, unless love of the republic conquered him:

​he says that the Roman people do not believe that solid liberty has been recovered; the royal race, the royal name is not only in the state, but even in the government; this obstructs, this stands in the way of liberty.

”Do you,” he says, “L. Tarquinius, of your own free will, remove this fear. We remember, we confess, you expelled the kings; complete your service, take away from here the name of the kings. Your citizens, on my advice, will not only return your property to you, but if anything is lacking, they will generously increase it. Depart as a friend; relieve the state of a fear that is perhaps groundless: for minds are so persuaded that with the Tarquinian race, the kingship will depart hence.”

​At first, amazement at so new and sudden a turn of events had stopped the consul’s voice; then, as he began to speak, the leading men of the state surround him, begging the same thing with many entreaties. And indeed, the others moved him less;

​but after Sp. Lucretius, superior in age and dignity, and moreover his own father-in-law, began to urge him in various ways, now entreating, now persuading him to allow himself to be overcome by the consensus of the state, ​the consul, fearing lest these very same things should happen to him afterwards as a private citizen, with the loss of his property and with some other ignominy added besides, abdicated his consulship, and having transferred all his property to Lavinium, withdrew from the state.

​Brutus, on a decree of the senate, proposed to the people that all of the Tarquinian gens should be exiles. At the comitia centuriata, he created P. Valerius as his colleague, with whose help he had expelled the kings.