Servius Tullius, the sixth king 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. 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
- see Roman Republic
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