[Footnote 48: The Lucumones were a class of persons among the Etrurians
of a warlike sacerdotal character, patricians, not kings. Vid. Niebuhr,
i. p. 372.]

35. Ancus reigned twenty-four years, equal to any of the former kings
both in the arts and renown of war and peace. His sons were now nigh
the age of puberty, for this reason Tarquin was more urgent that the
assembly for the election of a king should be held as soon as possible.
The assembly being proclaimed, he sent away the boys to hunt towards the
time of their meeting. He is said to have been the first who earnestly
sued for the crown, and to have made a set speech for the purpose of
gaining the affections of the people: _he said_ "that he did not aim at
any thing unprecedented; for that he was not the first foreigner, (a
thing at which any one might feel indignation or surprise,) but the
third who aspired to the sovereignty of Rome. That Tatius not only from
being an alien, but even an enemy, was made king: that Numa,
unacquainted with the city, and without soliciting it, had been
voluntarily invited by them to the throne. That he, as soon as he was
his own master, had come to Rome with his wife and whole fortune, and
had there spent a greater part of that age, in which men are employed in
civil offices, than he had in his native country: that he had both in
peace and war thoroughly learned the Roman laws and religious customs,
under a master not to be objected to, king Ancus himself; that he had
vied with all in duty and loyalty to his prince, and even with the king
himself in his bounty to others." While he was recounting these
undoubted facts, the people by a great majority elected him king. The
same ambition which had prompted Tarquin, in other respects an excellent
man, to aspire to the crown, followed him whilst on the throne. And
being no less mindful of strengthening his own power, than of increasing
that of the commonwealth, he elected a hundred into the fathers, who
from that time were called Minorum Gentium, _i. e._ of the younger
families: a party hearty in the king's cause, by whose favour they had
got into the senate. The first war he waged was with the Latins, from
whom he took the town of Apiolae by storm, and having brought back thence
more booty than the character of the war would lead one to expect, he
celebrated games with more cost and magnificence than former kings. The
place for the circus, which is now called Maximus, was then first mark