from the country, and shortly after perished at Rome by the
hand of a wounded enemy, and so ended a career of unnatural
murders._
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 fulfil 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."[144]
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[145] 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 honour 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 honour
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 honour and
office of the consulship.