Tarquin is said in the story to have betaken himself to Cære, and from thence to Tarquinii,--according to others, to Veii, to call upon the Veientines for aid. The emigration to Cære is nothing else but a personification of the “_jus Cæritum exulandi_,” this _jus exulandi_ having always existed between Rome and those who were on terms of isopolity. The _jus Cæritum_ is prominently mentioned in the old law-books, the reason for which seems to have been the flight of Tarquin. The version of the books is that he went to Cære; that of poetry that he went to Veii, and led the Veientines against Rome. The annalists finding both of these too mean, gave it out as most likely that he might have bent his steps to Tarquinii, where forsooth he must yet have had some relations. With regard to Cære, whither the royal family is said to have gone, there is no mention whatever of its having supported it in the war. Cicero, who had seen the genuine old Roman history, knows nothing of the participation of the people of Tarquinii in the Veientine war: he says in the Tusculan questions, that neither the Veientines nor the Latins had been able to bring back Tarquin. Purely mythical is the battle near the forest of Arsia, where Brutus and Aruns fall fighting, and the god Sylvanus loudly shouts forth the decision after 13,000 Etruscans, and one Roman less, had been stretched dead on the field of battle. Now that cannot be any thing but poetry. Lars, or Lar[87] Porsena is an heroic name, as Heracles among the Greeks, Rustam among the Persians, Dietrich (Theodoric) of Berne, or Etzel (Attila) in the German epic lay. The principal characters of the heroic legends are blended with history, and their names are linked to events which have really happened. The war of Porsena belonged to those traditions which were most widely spread among the Romans, and it is represented as the second attempt of the Tarquinii to recover the throne: the Veientine war had not effected any thing, and after the death of Brutus it is no more spoken of. Cicero surely looked upon this war of Porsena in no other light than that of a Tuscan war of conquest. And undoubtedly the Romans were at that time engaged in a most destructive conflict with the Tuscans, in consequence of which they sank as low as any people can sink. From republican vanity this immediate result of an alteration in the constitution was thrown into the shade:--the Gallic conquest was just as dishonestly covered over. Of Porsena, the legend must have told a great deal. Thus a mausoleum of his at Clusium is mentioned, which Pliny quite innocently describes from Varro, who had it from Etruscan books. This account especially shakes my belief in the trustworthiness of the old Etruscan books, which to judge from this sample must have been tinged with an oriental colouring. It is a marvellous work, such as never has existed, and never could have existed,--like a fairy palace in the Arabian Nights.