body-guard for protection from the attacks of any who might wish to
take the crown from him in the way that he had snatched it from his
predecessor. As soon as possible after coming to the throne, he swept
away all privilege and right that had been conceded to the commons,
commanded that there should no longer be any of those assemblages on
the occasions of festivals and sacrifices that had before tended to
unite the people and to break the monotony of their lives; he put the
poor at taskwork, and mistrusted, banished, or murdered the rich. To
strengthen the position of Rome as chief of the confederates cities,
and his own position as the ruler of Rome, he gave his daughter to
Octavius Mamilius of Tusculum to wife; and to beautify the capital he
warred against other peoples, and with their spoil pushed forward the
work on the great temple on the Capitoline Hill, [Footnote: This hill
is said to have received its name from the fact that as the men were
preparing for the foundation of the temple, they came upon a human
head, fresh and bleeding, from which it was augured that the spot was
to become the head of the world. (_Caput_, a head.)] a wonderful
and massy structure.

It is said that Amalthea, the mysterious sibyl of Cumæ, one day came to
Tarquin with nine sealed prophetical books (which, she said, contained
the destiny of the Romans and the mode to bring it about), that she
offered to sell. The king refused, naturally unwilling to pay for
things that he could not examine; and thereupon the unreasonable being
went away and destroyed three of the volumes that she had described as
of inestimable value. Soon after she returned and offered the remaining
six for the price that she had demanded for the nine. Once more, the
tyrant declined the offer, and again the aged sibyl destroyed three,
and demanded the original price for the remainder. The king's curiosity
was now aroused, and he bought the three books, upon which the