king had killed his father and had moreover taken his property away
from him feigned madness, to the end that he might possibly survive.
For he well understood that every person possessed of sense,
especially when he is of a distinguished family, becomes an object of
suspicion to tyrants. And when once he had started on this plan he
acted it out with great precision, and for that reason was called
Brutus. This is the name that the Latins gave to idiots. Sent along
with Titus and Arruns as if he were a kind of plaything he carried a
staff as a votive offering, he said, to the gods, though it had no
great value so far as anyone could see. (Mai, p. 139.)

6. Dio in Book 2: "After that he was found in the Pythian god's
temple." (Bekker, Anecd. p. 139, 21.)

7. ¶They made sport of the gift [i. e. the staff] of Brutus, and when to
the enquiry of the ambassadors as to who should succeed to the kingdom
of their father the oracle replied that the first to kiss his mother
should hold dominion over the Romans, he kissed the earth, pretending to
have fallen down by accident, for he regarded her as the mother of all
mankind. (Mai, p. 140.)

8. ¶Brutus overthrew the Tarquins for the following reason. During the
siege of Ardea the children of Tarquin were one day dining with Brutus
and Collatinus, since these two were of their own age and relatives;
and they fell into a discussion and finally into a dispute about the
virtue of their wives,--each one giving the preference to his own
spouse. And, as all the women happened to be absent from the camp,
they decided straightaway that night, before they could be announced,
to take horse and ride away to all of them simultaneously. This they
did, and found all engaged in a carousal except Lucretia, wife of