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MATTHEW OF WESTMINSTER The flowers of history, especially such as relate to the affairs of Britain. Vol. I. B.C. 4004 to A.D. 1066.

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MATTHEW OF WESTMINSTER
The flowers of history, especially such as relate to the affairs of Britain. Vol. I. B.C. 4004 to A.D. 1066.
page 67



58 MATTHEW of W18TMJJT8Ts1l. B.C. 510. In his time, by the indulgence of Cyrus, king of Persia, forty-two thousand four hundred Jews returned to Jerusalem. Tarquinwasthe first inventor of the different modes of torture, such as scourges of oxhide, clubs, red-hot plates, prisons, chains, fetters, exile, working in mines. He completed the temple of Jupiter, in the Capitol ; afterwards, while besieging Ardea, he was expelled by the Romans, and lost his kingdom. For the younger son of this Tarquin had violently ravished a most noble matron of the Roman state, by name Lucretia, the wife of Collatinus, and a relation of Brutus, a man of most noble birth ; and she, having complained to her husband Collatinus, and to her father, and to Brutus her kinsman, and to her other friends and relations, of the injury done to her, and having bound them by an oath to avenge her, chastising in her own own person the foul crime which had been committed against her, slew herself before them all. And in this way seven kings reigned at Rome, for a period of two hundred and forty-three years. CH. XI.—The Consular Government is established at Rome^—The war with Porsenna—The Dictatorship—The wars of Camillus —Rome is taken by the Gauls—History of Esther and Mor1 decai — Torquatus—Corvinus—Alexander the Great—Wars with the Samnites—Papirius Cursor—Ine Caudine Forts— War with Pyrrhus—Cineas—Fabricius—Death of Pyrrhus— The first Punic war—DuiUus's naval victory—Régulas1 s death. AFTER this, two consuls began to be created instead of one king ; with this view, that if one of them chose to be a bad ruler, the other, who had equal power with him, might restrain him; and it was determined that they should retain their office more than one year, that they might not be made insolent by a long duration of power. The consuls in the first year were Lucius Junius, and Brutus,* who had been the main instrument of the expulsion of the Tar quins. And it was determined that no one should remain in the city who bore the name of Tarquin. * Our author is mistaken here ; it was Brutus whose prsenomen was Junius, and not Lucius Collatinus his coUeague ; but I shall not think it necessary, except in very important instances, to point out the variations between the account given in these chronicles and that which is more usually received.


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