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Servius Tullius

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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