en to the young men of
the Latins, that, according to the treaty, they should attend in
considerable numbers in arms, on a certain day, at the grove of
Ferentina. And when they assembled from all the states according to the
edict of the Roman king, in order that they should neither have a
general of their own, nor a separate command, or their own standards, he
compounded companies of Latins and Romans, so as to make one out of two,
and two out of one; the companies being thus doubled, he appointed
centurions over them.

53. Nor was Tarquin, though a tyrannical prince in peace, a despicable
general in war; nay, he would have equalled his predecessors in that
art, had not his [62]degeneracy in other respects likewise detracted
from his merit here. He began the war against the Volsci, which lasted
two hundred years after his time, and took from them Suessa Pometia by
storm; and when by the sale of the spoils he had amassed forty talents
of silver and of gold, he designed such magnificence for a temple to
Jupiter, as should be worthy of the king of gods and men, of the Roman
empire, and of the majesty of the place itself: for the building of this
temple he set apart the money arising from the spoils. Soon after a war
came upon him, more tedious than he expected, in which, having in vain
attempted to storm Gabii, a city in his neighbourhood, when being
repulsed from the walls all hopes of taking it by siege also was taken
from him, he assailed it by fraud and stratagem, arts by no means Roman.
For when, as if the war was laid aside, he pretended to be busily taken
up with laying the foundation of the temple, and with his other works in
the city, Sextus, the youngest of his three sons, according to concert,
fled to Gabii, complaining of the inhuman cruelty of his father, "that
he had turned his tyranny from others against his own family, and was
uneasy at the number of his own children, intending to make the same
desolations in his own house which he had made in the senate, in order
that he might leave behind him no issue, nor heir to his kingdom. That
for his own part, as he had escaped from amidst the swords and other
weapons of his father, he was persuaded he could find no safety any
where but among the enemies of L. Tarquin. And, that they might not be
led astray, that the war, which it is now pretended has been given up,
still lies in reserve, and that he would attack them when off their
guard on the occurrence of an opp