spot, making
treaties without consulting the Senate, and living for his pleasure alone.
But he ornamented the city with magnificent edifices, and completed the
Circus Maximus as well as the Capitoline Temple, which stood five hundred
years. He was also successful in war, and exalted the glory of the Roman
name.

(M779) An end came to his tyranny by one of those events on which poetry
and history have alike exhausted all their fascinations. It was while
Tarquin was conducting a war against Ardea, and the army was idly encamped
before the town, that the sons of Tarquin, with their kinsmen, were
supping in the tent of Sextus, that conversation turned upon the
comparative virtue of their wives. By a simultaneous impulse, they took
horse to see the manner in which these ladies were at the time employed.
The wives of Tarquin's sons at Rome were found in luxurious banquets with
other women. Lucretia, the wife of Collatinus, was discovered carding wool
in the midst of her maidens. The boast of Collatinus that his wife was the
most virtuous was confirmed. But her charms or virtues made a deep
impression on the heart or passions of Sextus, and he returned to her
dwelling in Collatia to propose infamous overtures. They were proudly
rejected, but the disappointed lover, by threats and force, accomplished
his purpose. Lucretia, stung with shame, made known the crime of Sextus to
her husband and father, who hastened to her house, accompanied with
Brutus. They found the ravished beauty in agonies of shame and revenge,
and after she had revealed the scandalous facts, she plunged a dagger in
her own bosom and died, invoking revenge. Her relatives and friends
carried her corpse to the market-place, revealed the atrocity of the crime
of Sextus, and demanded vengeance. The people rallied in the Forum at
Rome, and the assembled Curiae deprived Tarquin of his throne, and decreed
the banishment of his accursed family. On the news of the insurrection,
the tyrant started for the city with a band of chosen followers, but
Brutus reached the army after the king had left, recounted the wrongs, and
marched to Rome, whose gates were already shut against Tarquin. He fled to
Etruria, with two of his sons, but Sextus was murdered by the people of
Gabii.

(M780) Thus were the kings driven out of Rome, never to return. In the
revolution which followed, the patricians recovered their power, and a new
form of government was instituted, republican in name,