Ab urbe condita

He was acclaimed as king by a unanimous vote such as no king before him had obtained. The Assassination of the King. This action in no degree damped Tarquin's hopes of making his way to the throne, rather the reverse. He was a bold and aspiring youth, and his wife Tullia stimulated his restless ambition. He had seen that the granting of land to the commons was in defiance of the opinion of the senate, and he seized the opportunity it afforded him of traducing Servius and strengthening his own faction in that assembly.

So it came about that the Roman palace afforded an instance of the crime which tragic poets have depicted,[*](Sophocles in the Oedipus and Aeschylus in the Agamemnon ) with the result that the loathing felt

for kings hastened the advent of liberty, and the crown won by villainy was the last that was worn.