File:Ancient legends of Roman history (1905) (14777018442).jpg

Identifier: ancientlegendsof00pais (find matches)
Title: Ancient legends of Roman history
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors: Pais, Ettore, 1856-1939 Cosenza, Mario Emilio, 1880-1966, tr
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Publisher: New York, Dodd, Mead & Company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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ill more ancient sources. Thiscan be deduced from a fragment of Cassius Hemina, anannalist of the second century B.C. This author, in speak-ing of Tarquinius Superbus, says that he had forced thepeople to build the sewers; and that when, on this account,many committed suicide by hanging, he ordered their bodiesto be nailed to crosses.57 Whether directly or indirectly,an ancient annalist is again the source for a similar state-ment in Pliny, where (as in other cases) Tarquinius Su-perbus is confused with Tarquinius Priscus. Pliny, in-deed, after relating that the sewers were built by Tar-quinius, says: Since Tarquinius Priscus built that workwith the hands of the people, and since it was difficult todecide whether such labor was more intolerable on accountof its severity than its long duration, many Quirites escapedby committing suicide; and the king then hit upon a newand hitherto unthought of remedy, namely, to nail to thecross the corpses of all who died in this manner, to be looked
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THE SAXUM TARPEIUM 121 upon by the citizens and, at the same time, to be torn bythe wild birds.58 In these two passages only the sewersare mentioned. It is to be observed, however, that suchfragments can be fully understood only when those partsof Livy and of Dionysius are held in mind, in which it isnarrated that Tarquinius Priscus (and especially Tar-quinius Superbus) oppressed the people, compelling themto surround the city with a wall, to erect the temple ofJupiter Capitolinus, to build the Circus Maximus, and todig the cloaca,—in a word, to fulfil the duties of opiiicesand lapicidce,—of workmen and of stone-cutters.59 Aboveall, it must be remembered that Tarquinius Superbus, inorder to oppress the people, alone and without any coun-sellors exercised jurisdiction over capital offences, and bythis means he was able to slay, drive into exile, and confiscateproperty.60 All the elements, then, in the passages cited (which seemto have Suetonius as a common source), actually date ba

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