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Updated: May 21, 2025
For, notwithstanding the great scarcity, each person contributed something to him in proportion to his private means, depriving himself of his own means of support. Porsina, repulsed in his first attempt, having changed his plans to a siege of the city, and a blockade, and pitched his camp in the plain and on the bank of the Tiber, placed a garrison in the Janiculum.
Affection for their hosts and for the city caused many others to remain at Rome: a quarter was assigned them to dwell in, which has ever since been called the Tuscan Street. Spurius Lucretius and Publius Valerius Publicola were next elected consuls. In that year ambassadors came from Porsina for the last time, to discuss the restoration of Tarquin to the throne.
Porsina still entertained the hope that, by continuing the blockade, he would be able to reduce the city, when Gaius Mucius, a young noble, who considered it a disgrace that the Roman people, who, even when in a state of slavery, while under the kings, had never been confined within their walls during any war, or blockaded by any enemy, should now, when a free people, be blockaded by these very Etruscans whose armies they had often routed and thinking that such disgrace ought to be avenged by some great and daring deed, at first designed on his own responsibility to make his way into the enemy's camp.
There, as the soldiers happened to be receiving their pay, and the king's secretary, sitting by him, similarly attired, was busily engaged, and generally addressed by the soldiers, he killed the secretary, against whom chance blindly directed the blow, instead of the king, being afraid to ask which of the two was Porsina, lest, by displaying his ignorance of the king, he should disclose who he himself was.
Such were the transactions at home and abroad during the first year after the expulsion of the kings. After this Publius Valerius, for the second time, and Titus Lucretius were elected consuls. By this time the Tarquins had fled to Lars Porsina, King of Clusium.
The custom handed down from the ancients, and which has continued down to our times among other usages at public sales, that of selling the goods of King Porsina, is inconsistent with this account of so peaceful a departure of the Etruscan king from the city.
Porsina, having abandoned the war against the Romans, that his army might not seem to have been led into those parts to no purpose, sent his son Arruns with part of his forces to besiege Aricia.
In regard to the restoration of territory to the Veientines his request was granted, and the obligation of giving hostages, if they wished the garrison to be withdrawn from the Janiculum, was extorted from the Romans. Peace being concluded on these terms, Porsina led his troops down from the Janiculum, and withdrew from Roman territory.
The rest will be with you each in his turn, according to the fortune that shall befall me who drew the first lot, until fortune on some favourable opportunity shall have delivered you into their hands." Mucius, to whom the surname of Scaevola was afterward given from the loss of his right hand, was let go and ambassadors from Porsina followed him to Rome.
Of the accounts handed down, the most probable is, that Porsina, when retiring from the Janiculum, made a present to the Romans of his camp rich with stores of provisions conveyed from the neighbouring fertile fields of Etruria, as the city was then exhausted owing to the long siege: that then, to prevent its contents being plundered as if it belonged to an enemy when the people were admitted, they were sold, and called the goods of Porsina, the expression rather conveying the idea of a thankworthy gift than an auction of the king's property, seeing that this never even came into the power of the Roman people.
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