being made participators in the royal plunder, they might
lose for ever all hopes of a reconciliation with the Tarquins. A field
belonging to them, which lay between the city and the Tiber, having been
consecrated to Mars, has been called the Campus Martius. It happened
that there was a crop of corn upon it ready to be cut down, which
produce of the field, as they thought it unlawful to use, after it was
reaped, a great number of men carried the corn and straw in baskets, and
threw them into the Tiber, which then flowed with shallow water, as is
usual in the heat of summer; that thus the heaps of corn as it stuck in
the shallows became settled when covered over with mud: by these and the
afflux of other things, which the river happened to bring thither, an
island was formed by degrees. Afterwards I believe that mounds were
added, and that aid was afforded by art, that a surface so well raised
might be firm enough for sustaining temples and porticoes. After
plundering the tyrants' effects, the traitors were condemned and capital
punishment inflicted. Their punishment was the more remarkable, because
the consulship imposed on the father the office of punishing his own
children, and him who should have been removed as a spectator, fortune
assigned as the person to exact the punishment. Young men of the highest
quality stood tied to a stake; but the consul's sons attracted the eyes
of all the spectators from the rest of the criminals, as from persons
unknown; nor did the people pity them more on account of the severity of
the punishment, than the horrid crime by which they had deserved it.
"That they, in that year particularly, should have brought themselves to
betray into the hands of Tarquin, formerly a proud tyrant, and now an
exasperated exile, their country just delivered, their father its
deliverer, the consulate which took its rise from the family of the
Junii, the fathers, the people, and whatever belonged either to the gods
or the citizens of Rome."[67] The consuls seated themselves in their
tribunal, and the lictors, being despatched to inflict punishment, strip
them naked, beat them with rods, and strike off their heads. Whilst
during all this time, the father, his looks and his countenance,
presented a touching spectacle,[68] the feelings of the father bursting
forth occasionally during the office of superintending the public
execution. Next after the punishment of the guilty, that there might be
a striking examp