“I knew it!” whispered Titus. “It’s Collatinus. That means the woman in his arms…”
The lifeless body was dressed in a long-sleeved stola of dark blue, stained with blood at the breast. Her head was thrown back, hiding her face. Her dark hair hung straight down, so long that it brushed her husband’s feet.
Brutus stepped forward. Now, in the utter silence, Titus could hear him clearly. “Tell them, Collatinus. They won’t believe me. They don’t want to believe such a terrible thing. Tell them what’s happened.”
Collatinus’s wrenching sob reverberated around the Forum and sent a shiver through the crowd. For a long moment he seemed unable to compose himself. When he finally spoke, his words rang loud and clear. “Sextus Tarquinius did this. The king’s son! He raped my wife, my beloved Lucretia. While I was away, he came to my house. He was welcomed as an honored guest, invited to dine, given a room. In the middle of the night, he came to her. He forced his way into her bed—our bed! He held a dagger to her throat—you can see where the blade scored her flesh! A servant heard her beg for mercy, but one of Sextus’s men guarded the door. The servant sent for me, but by the time I arrived, Sextus was gone. Lucretia was weeping, inconsolable, mad with grief. Sextus left behind the knife he used to threaten her. Before I could stop her, she plunged it into her heart. She died in my arms!”
As if the weight suddenly grew too heavy, Collatinus dropped to his knees, still cradling the body in his arms. He hung his head and wept.
Brutus stepped forward and held up a bloody dagger. “This is the knife!” he cried. “The very blade that Sextus Tarquinius used when he raped Lucretia, the blade she used to kill herself.” He waited for the gasps from the crowd to die down. “How much longer will we stand for this? What else will we allow the tyrant and his sons to take from us? This intolerable state of affairs ends here and now, today!” Brutus held the knife high in the air and turned to face the Capitoline, as if he were addressing Jupiter in the unfinished temple atop the hill. To Titus, it seemed as if the stern-looking, gauntfaced man had abruptly turned to look directly at him and his friends. The sensation was unsettling, and Titus shivered.
“By the innocent blood on this knife,” declared Brutus, “and by the gods, I swear that with fire and sword, and whatever else can lend strength to my arm, I will pursue Tarquinius the Proud, his wicked wife, and all his children, not one of whom deserves to live in the company of decent men, much less rule over them. I will drive them out, and never again will I let them or any other man be king in Roma!”
The crowd erupted in a tumult of shouting. Women tore at their hair. Men shook their fists. A mob surged up the steps of the Senate House and lifted Brutus onto their shoulders. He seemed to float above the crowd, his arm upraised to thrust the bloody knife toward heaven.
Even from the safety of the Capitoline, Titus felt a prickle of fear. He had never seen such a spectacle; the fury of the mob was like a force of nature unleashed. His heart pounded in his chest. His mouth was too dry to speak.
“What do you think he meant by that?” said Gnaeus. His voice seemed impossibly calm.
“He couldn’t have said it more plainly,” said Publius, his voice breaking. “Brutus means to drive Tarquinius out of Roma.”
“Yes. And then what?”
Publius snorted with exasperation. “Brutus will take his place, of course.”
“No, Publius, that’s not what he said. ‘Never again will I let them or any other man be king in Roma.’ Brutus means to cast out the king, and put no one in his place.”
Publius frowned. “But if there’s no king, who will rule the city?”
Like his friends, Titus was puzzled. He was frightened and exhilarated, all at once, and struck dumb with grief that Lucretia—beautiful, wise, loving Lucretia—should have suffered such a horrible fate. He was overwhelmed by what he had just witnessed. Something had ended that day, and something else had begun, and all their lives would be changed forever.
509 B.C.
Dressed in his priestly robes and proudly wearing the talisman of Fascinus—for today he was present both in his ancestral role as a priest of Hercules and as the scion of the Potitii—Titus stood between his father and grandfather in the front ranks of the crowd that had gathered on the Capitoline before the new Temple of Jupiter. The Pinarii were there as well, in a place of equal honor. Publius’s great-grandfather was looking very frail and more than a little confused; but whose head was not in a spin, after the tumultuous events of the last year?
The occasion was the dedication of the temple. Up to the last minute, Vulca had been frantically putting finishing touches here and there—daubing paint on the scuffed elbow of Minerva, polishing the great bronze hinges of the doors, instructing his men to move the throne of Jupiter a finger’s width to the left because the statue was not precisely centered atop its pedestal. It did not matter that Vulca still perceived tiny imperfections everywhere; to Titus, there had never been anything as beautiful as the temple. It was truly worthy of its commanding position atop the Capitoline, which made it the most prominent building in all of Roma, dominating the skyline from every vantage point. With the scaffolding gone at last, Titus could fully appreciate the perfection of its proportions and the soaring line of the columns that supported the pediment. Atop the pediment, the statue of Jupiter in his chariot drawn by four white horses majestically evoked the supreme king of gods and men. The temple was a thing of earthly beauty that inspired religious awe.
Standing side by side on the porch of the temple, overseeing the dedication, were the two consuls, Brutus and Collatinus. Though his face was as gaunt as ever, Brutus no longer dressed in beggar’s rags. Like Collatinus, he wore a toga with a purple stripe to denote his status as one of the two highest magistrates of the new republic.
Republic—the word was still new to Titus and fell strangely on his ear. It came from the words res (a thing, circumstance, state of being) and publica (of the people). Res publica: the people’s state. In the wake of Tarquinius’s sudden downfall and departure—the uprising had been so overwhelming that the revolution occurred almost without bloodshed—the leading men of the Senate had decided to run the state themselves, without a king. The common people had loudly insisted they must be given an assembly of their own, and laws to protect them, because the favor of the king had been their only bulwark against the whims of wealthy, powerful patricians.
“Rules, rules, rules!” complained Titus’s grandfather, after attending the first raucous meetings of the new government. “When no man is king, every man is king, and thinks he should have his own way, or at least his own say. The result is chaos! Endless arguments and no agreement about anything, except that there must be new rules to override any old rules that were previously agreed upon. No one is satisfied. Everyone thinks everyone else is getting a better deal. It’s almost enough to make a man nostalgic for the one we called Proud!”
Despite all the problems that plagued the new state, this was a day of celebration. The dedication of the new temple, which was to have been King Tarquinius’s crowning achievement, would serve instead to mark the first year of the new republic. Indeed, to Titus, the magnificence of Vulca’s brightly painted statues and the breathless perfection of his architecture exemplified a bold new spirit in the city of Roma.
To a visitor, it might have appeared that the two magistrates on the porch of the temple were co-rulers, little different from kings. Their dress set them apart from and above the rest, and like kings they were guarded by lictors armed with rods and axes. Even the fact that they had been elected to office did not differentiate them from kings, for all the kings of Roma, except Tarquinius, had been elected to the post, even if some had been more freely chosen than others. But the two consuls, ruling side by side so that one might serve as a check on the other, were to serve for only a year, and then to relinquish their office to the next two consuls to win election. By dividing the powers of the consuls and holding annual elections, it was hoped that the state could be made to serve the people, and that Roma would never again fall under the sway of a tyrant like Tarquinius.