Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 18, 2025
Perhaps he expected applause in response to his question, but there was no sound of applause; on the contrary, every one seemed to subside and shrink back in dismay. "You never did see Ancus Marcius, that's all brag," cried a voice that sounded full of irritation and even nervous exhaustion. "Just so," another voice agreed at once.
The patrician house of the Marcii in Rome produced many men of distinction, and among the rest, Ancus Marcius, grandson to Numa by his daughter, and king after Tulus Hostillus. Of the same family were also Publius and Quintus Marcius, which two conveyed into the city the best and most abundant supply of water they have at Rome.
To the Romans justice was administered by Romulus according to his pleasure: after him, Numa managed the people by religious devices and laws divine. Some institutions were made by Tullus Hostilius, some by Ancus Martius; but above all our laws were those founded by Servius Tullius; they were such as even our kings were bound to obey.
Ancus, having intrusted the care of sacred matters to the flamen and other priests, set out with an army freshly levied, and took Politorium, a city of the Latins, by storm: and following the example of former kings, who had increased the Roman power by incorporating enemies into the state, transplanted all the people to Rome.
We see, too, how the elder Tarquin was ruined by his belief that he held the kingdom by a just title, since it had been given him by the people and confirmed to him by the senate, never suspecting that the sons of Ancus would be so stirred by resentment that it would be impossible to content them with what contented all the rest of Rome.
Tradition indeed assigns the different works to different kings the senate-house to Tullus Hostilius, the Janiculum and the wooden bridge to Ancus Marcius, the great Cloaca, the Circus, and the temple of Jupiter to the elder Tarquinius, the temple of Diana and the ring-wall to Servius Tullius.
Nothing was so wretched among the productions of art, that he could not impose upon the world as a capital performance; and so fascinated were the eyes of his admirers, he could easily have persuaded them that a barber's bason was an Etrurian patera, and the cover of a copper pot no other than the shield of Ancus Martius.
The flowers grow over them now, or the church floor covers them; the sack is drunk, the roast beef is eaten, the quarrel is over; the beauty and the red-faced parson, the husband and wife, they are all with Tullus and Ancus. Pulvis et umbra that is the moral of "Pepys's Diary."
At this time the two sons of Ancus, though they had before that always considered it the highest indignity that they had been deprived of their father's crown by the treachery of their guardian, that a stranger should be king of Rome, who was not only not of a civic, but not even of an Italian family, yet now felt their indignation rise to a still higher pitch at the notion that the crown would not only not revert to them after Tarquin, but would descend even lower to a slave, so that in the same state about the hundredth year after Romulus, descended from a deity, and a deity himself, occupied the throne as long as he lived, a slave, and one born of a slave, should now possess it.
As for me, I came hither so soon as I was master of myself; and of the years of my manhood, I have lived in Rome more than in my own country; nor have I been ill taught the ways of a King, ministering to Ancus both at home and abroad." With these words he persuaded the people that they chose him to be king.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking