Servius Tullius

Servius Tullius, sixth of the Kings of Rome, described in one account as originally a slave, is said to have married a daughter of Tarquin, and to have gained the throne by the contrivance of Tanaquil, his mother-in-law. In this account (found in Livy) Tullius was anointed as a young child to become king, after he spontaneously caught on fire. He was then raised as a prince. Incedintly, Livy did not belive that Servius Tullius was born a slave. Livy postulated that Tullius' mother was a queen of an Etruscan city which had been sacked by the Romans. His mother was caputed and to pay homage to her regal origins she was allowed to live in the palace. Another legend represented him as a soldier of fortune originally named Mastarna, from Etruria, who attached himself to Cæles Vibenna, the founder of an Etruscan city on the Cælian Hill. Servius included within one circuit the five separately fortified hills which were then inhabited and added two more, thus completing the "Septimontium"; the space thus enclosed he divided into four "regiones", the Suburana, Esquilina, Collina, and Palatina.

His legislation was extremely distasteful to the patrician order, and his reign of forty-four years was brought to a close by a conspiracy headed by his son-in-law Tarquinius Superbus. The street in which Tullia drove her car over her father's body ever after bore the name of the "Vicus Sceleratus."

Original text from a paper copy of the 9th edition EB

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