he murdered her sister, she should kill his brother, and then that they
should marry. The horrid deed was carried out, and old Servius, seeing
what a wicked pair were likely to come after him, began to consider with
the Senate whether it would not be better to have two consuls or
magistrates chosen every year than a king. This made Lucius Tarquin the
more furious, and going to the Senate, where the patricians hated the
king as the friend of the plebeians, he stood upon the throne, and was
beginning to tell the patricians that this would be the ruin of their
greatness, when Servius came in and, standing on the steps of the
doorway, ordered him to come down. Tarquin sprang on the old man and
hurled him backward, so that the fall killed him, and his body was left
in the street. The wicked Tullia, wanting to know how her husband had
sped, came out in her chariot on that road. The horses gave back before
the corpse. She asked what was in their way; the slave who drove her
told her it was the king's body. "Drive on," she said. The horrid deed
caused the street to be known ever after as "Sceleratus," or the wicked.
But it was the plebeians who mourned for Servius; the patricians in
their anger made Tarquin king, but found him a very hard and cruel
master, so that he is generally called Tarquinius Superbus, or Tarquin
the proud. In his time the Sybil of Cumæ, the same wondrous maiden of
deep wisdom who had guided Æneas to the realms of Pluto, came, bringing
nine books of prophecies of the history of Rome, and offered them to him
at a price which he thought too high, and refused. She went away,
destroyed three, and brought back the other six, asking for them double
the price of the whole. He refused. She burnt three more, and brought
him the last three with the price again doubled, because the fewer they
were, the more precious. He bought them at last, and placed them in the
Capitol, whence they were now and then taken to be consulted as oracles.

[Illustration: SYBIL'S CAVE.]