old.

These oracles do not appear to have predicted future events, but were
consulted to discover the religious observances necessary to avert great
calamities and to expiate prodigies. During the reign of Augustus they
were removed to the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine Hill, and all the
false Sibylline leaves which were extant were collected and burned. They
remained here until shortly after the year 400 A.D., when they were
publicly burned by Stilicho, a famous general of Christian Rome, as
impious documents of heathen times.

_THE STORY OF LUCRETIA._

We have next to tell how Tarquin the Proud lost his throne, through his
own tyranny and the criminal action of his son. Once upon a time, when
this king was at the height of his power, he, as was usual, offered
sacrifices to the gods on the altar in the palace court-yard. But from
the altar there crawled out a snake, which devoured the offerings before
the flames could reach them.

This was an alarming omen. The augurs were consulted, but none of them
could explain it. So Tarquin sent two of his sons to the Temple of
Delphi, in Greece, whose oracle was famous in all lands, to ask counsel
of Apollo concerning this prodigy. With these two princes, Titus and
Aruns by name, went their cousin, Lucius Junius, a youth who seemed so
lacking in wit that men called him Brutus,--that is, the "Dullard." One
evidence of his lack of wit was that he would eat wild figs with honey.
Just in what way this was an evidence of want of good sense we do not
know, though doubtless the Romans did.

But Brutus was by no means the fool that men fancied him. He was shrewd
instead of stupid. His father had left him abundant wealth, to which
his uncle, King Tarquin, might at any time take a fancy, and sweep him
away to enjoy it. The king had killed his brother for his wealth, and
would be likely to serve him in the same way if he deemed him wise
enough to fight for his inheritance. So, preferring life to money,
Brutus feigned to be wanting in sense.

When he went to Delphi he took with him a hollow staff of horn, which he
had filled with gold, and offered this staff to the oracle as a likeness
of himself,--perhaps as one empty of wit and whose whole merit lay in
his gold. When the three young men had performed the bidding of the
king, and asked the oracle the meaning of the prodigy, they were told
that it portended the fall of Tarquin. Then they said, "O Lord Apollo,
tell us which o