Ab urbe condita

Both sides behaved honourably; the Romans surrendered her as a pledge of loyalty to the terms of the treaty; the Etruscan king showed that with him courage was not only safe but honoured, and after eulogising the girl's conduct, told her that he would make her a present of half the remaining hostages, she was to choose whom she would.

It is said that after all had been brought before her, she chose the boys of tender age; a choice in keeping with maidenly modesty, and one approved by the hostages themselves, since they felt that the age which was most liable to ill-treatment should have the preference in being rescued from hostile hands.

After peace was thus re-established, the Romans rewarded the unprecedented courage shown by a woman by an unprecedented honour, namely an equestrian statue. On the highest part of the Sacred Way a statue was erected representing the maiden sitting on horseback.

Quite[*](Final Attempt to restore the Tarquins.) inconsistent with this peaceful withdrawal from the City on the part of the Etruscan king is the custom which, with other formalities, has been handed down from antiquity to our own age of “selling the goods of King Porsena.”

This custom must either have been introduced during the war and kept up after peace was made, or else it must have a less bellicose origin than would be implied by the description of the goods sold as “taken from the enemy.”

The most probable tradition is that Porsena, knowing the City to be without food owing to the long investment, made the Romans a present of his richly-stored camp, in which provisions had been collected from the neighbouring fertile fields of Etruria.

Then, to prevent the people seizing them indiscriminately as spoils of war, they were regularly sold, under the description of “the goods of Porsena,” a description indicating rather the gratitude of the people than an auction of the king's personal property, which had never been at the disposal of the Romans.