This they gladly did, and he reigned over them in peace and honour for many years; but, alas! the bright portent of his youth no longer hovered over his destiny, and dark days were at hand for him and for Rome. He had two daughters, both called Tullia—the elder good and pure as Tanaquil, who had now passed away, and the younger with a heart full of evil and cruelty. These two girls their father had given in marriage to the two sons of his benefactor Lucius, in hope of securing peace to the kingdom by thus uniting the families. The two sons of Lucius presented the same violent contrasts of character as the daughters of Servius; one was a sinner, the other a saint; and marriage mismated them, giving the elder Tullia to proud, wicked Lucius Tarquinius, and her black-hearted younger sister to the good Aruns. The consequences were soon all too apparent. Lucius fell in love with his brother’s wife; she responded to his passion; they two conspired to murder their lawful spouses, carried out their bloodthirsty plot, and then turned their attention to the removal of the aged Servius from their path to the throne.
Servius, sprung from the people, had made many enemies among the nobles by restraining their oppressions, and by championing the poorer classes, and the wicked Lucius found no difficulty in drawing discontented men into a plot to kill the King. They waited craftily till the height of the harvest season, when the able-bodied workingmen were all busy in the fields outside the city; then, gathering in force in the Forum, they installed Lucius in the seat from which Servius was accustomed to judge the causes that were brought before him. Servius was at once warned of that which was taking place, and hurried on foot from the royal residence on the so-called Cispian Hill; in haste to reach the Forum and quell the insurrection, he took the short-cut through what is now the Via Urbana. At the end of this street he was met by a band of assassins who hewed him down and left him in his blood, lying right across the road.
Meanwhile his daughter Tullia had left her own home (now marked by the Church of St. Peter of the Chains) and bade her charioteer drive at full speed to her father’s house, of which it was arranged that she should take possession while the slayers were despatching him. On reaching the Via Urbana the driver, aghast, pulled up his horses.