then, while all were struck with dismay, seating himself on the throne
before the senate-house, he ordered the fathers to be summoned to the
senate-house by the crier to attend King Tarquinius. They assembled
immediately, some having been already prepared for this, others
through fear, lest it should prove dangerous to them not to have come,
astounded at such a strange and unheard-of event, and considering that
the reign of Servius was now at an end. Then Tarquinius began his
invectives with his immediate ancestors: That a slave, the son of a
slave, after the shameful death of his father, without an interregnum
being adopted, as on former occasions, without any election being
held, without the suffrages of the people, or the sanction of the
fathers, he had taken possession of the kingdom by the gift of a
woman; that so born, so created king, a strong supporter of the most
degraded class, to which he himself belonged, through a hatred of the
high station of others, he had deprived the leading men of the state
of their land and divided it among the very lowest; that he had laid
all the burdens, which were formerly shared by all alike, on the chief
members of the community; that he had instituted the census, in order
that the fortune of the wealthier citizens might be conspicuous in
order to excite envy, and ready to hand, that out of it he might
bestow largesses on the most needy, whenever he pleased.

Servius, aroused by the alarming announcement, having come upon the
scene during this harangue, immediately shouted with a loud voice from
the porch of the senate-house: "What means this, Tarquin? By what
audacity hast thou dared to summon the fathers, while I am still
alive, or to sit on my throne?" When the other haughtily replied,
that he, a king's son, was occupying the throne of his father, a much
fitter successor to the throne than a slave; that he had insulted his
masters full long enough by shuffling insolence, a shout arose from