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Still we find at a later period Julius Caesar publicly professing his descent on both sides from a superhuman ancestor, for such he practically admits Ancus Martius to be. And in the epic of Silius Italicus the Roman generals occupy quite the conventional position of the hero-leader.
The boy, whose name was Servius Tullius, was thereupon brought up as a prince, and when old enough married the king's daughter. Lucius reigned forty years, and then the sons of Ancus, fearing to be robbed of their claim to the throne by young Servius, who had become very popular, managed to get an audience with and kill the king. The murderers gained nothing by their deed of blood.
Do you suppose that we ever heard it mentioned that Numa Pompilius, who not only was not a patrician, but not even a citizen of Rome, was sent for from the country of the Sabines by order of the people, with the approbation of the senate, and that he was made king at Rome? that afterwards Lucius Tarquinius, who was not only not of Roman, but not even of Italian extraction, the son of Damaratus of Corinth, an emigrant from Tarquinii, was made king, even whilst the sons of Ancus still lived? that after him Servius Tullius, the son of a captive woman of Corniculum, with his father unknown, his mother a slave, attained the throne by his ability and merit?
For he did not advance too near the sea, which he might easily have done with the forces under his command, either by entering the territory of the Rutuli and Aborigines, or by founding his citadel at the mouth of the Tiber, where many years after Ancus Martius established a colony.
Out of the spoils of Alba Longa, Tullus improved the Comitium, a space at the northwest end of the Forum, fronting the Curia, the common meeting place of the Romans and Sabines. On the Quirinal Hill he erected a Curia Saliorum in imitation of that of Numa on the Palatine, devoted to the worship of Quirinus. Ancus Martius, a grandson of Numa, succeeded Tullus after a reign of thirty-two years.
Now the sons of Ancus, since they had been grown to manhood, had taken it ill that Tarquin had been preferred before them to the throne of their father, and now they were the more angry, seeing how he had chosen another than them to be king after him.
Isolated names like those of the kings Numa, Ancus, Tullus, to whom the clan-names were probably only assigned subsequently, and isolated facts, such as the conquest of the Latins by king Tarquinius and the expulsion of the Tarquinian royal house, may have continued to live in true general tradition orally transmitted.
After this King Ancus died, having reigned twenty and four years, and left two sons, not yet old enough to reign, yet nearly grown to manhood. And some would have delayed the choosing of a king till these should be come to full age, but Tarquinius counselled that he should be chosen forthwith.
In a war against the Volscians, when Cominius was consul, he was besieging a city called Corioli, when news came that the men of Antium were marching against him, and in their first attack on the walls the Romans were beaten off, but a gallant young patrician, descended from the king Ancus Marcius, Caius Marcius by name, rallied them and led them back with such spirit that the place was taken before the hostile army came up; then he fought among the foremost and gained the victory.
For the Marcii Reges , her mother's family, deduce their pedigree from Ancus Marcius, and the Julii, her father's, from Venus; of which stock we are a branch. We therefore unite in our descent the sacred majesty of kings, the chiefest among men, and the divine majesty of Gods, to whom kings themselves are subject."