of Lucius Junius Brutus, one
of the first Consuls, as the chief magistrates of the new republic were
called, shows clearly how far the idea of duty to the republic could go
in the minds of Romans.

Brutus and Tarquin

The last King of Rome was Tarquin the Proud. His misrule, and the
insolent heartlessness of his family, especially of his son Sextus,
brought about their expulsion from Rome and the end of the kingship.
Sextus had, by guile, got into the town of Gabii but was at a loss how
to make himself master there. He managed to send out a messenger to his
father. It was summer. In the garden where the King was walking,
poppies--white and purple--were growing in long ranks. Tarquin said
nothing to the messenger: only as he walked he struck off with his staff
the heads of the tallest poppies, one after another, without saying a
word. Sextus, when the messenger came back and described to him his
father's action, understood. Pitilessly he put the leading men of Gabii
to the sword.

It was the misdeeds of this Sextus that brought the proud house of
Tarquin to the ground. He tried to force his brutal love on the fair
Lucretia, the wife of his cousin Collatinus, and so shamed her that,
after telling her husband how she had been wronged, Lucretia killed
herself before his eyes and those of his friend Brutus. Stirred to
deepest wrath, Collatinus and Brutus then swore a great oath to drive
the house of Tarquin from Rome and henceforth allow no king to rule over
the free people of the city. When they had told their fellow citizens
how Sextus had wronged Lucretia, a daughter of one of the proudest
families in the city, and reminded them of the oppression and injustice
they had all suffered at the hands of his family, the leading men of
Rome rose up and drove the Tarquins out. The city was proclaimed for
ever a republic to be ruled not by any one man but by the will and for
the good of all free men who dwelt in it. Some there were, however, who
took the side of Tarquin and tried to bring him back. Among them were
the two sons of Brutus. They were captured and brought up for judgement,
and like the others condemned to death. Brutus was the judge. Though
they were his sons and he loved them he condemned them unflinchingly.
Without any sign of feeling he saw them go to their death. An action for
which he would have sentenced another man seemed to him no less wrong
when committed by his own children.

_The Death of Lucreti