Livy gives the early history of this extraordinary work in his first Book. In the thirty-eighth chapter he ascribes the commencement of the undertaking of draining the Velabrum and Forum to Tarquinius Priscus, and in the fifty-sixth he says that Tarquinius Superbus completed the Cloaca Maxima as a receptacle for the refuse of the whole city. Dionysius agrees in giving the same account of the origin of the system of cloacæ, and Pliny enumerates the cloacæ among the wonders of the great metropolis, and expressly mentions Tarquinius Priscus as entitled to the credit of having first originated this great work of public utility. His words are--“Seven streams, after traversing the city, are united and their water so compressed into one channel as to sweep everything along with it like a torrent, and when a great body of rain-water is added to this the very walls are shaken by the agitated waters; and sometimes the Tiber rises and beats back into them, and vast opposing masses of water meet and struggle, yet the solidity of their masonry resists and stands firm. Huge weights are carried over them, whole buildings undermined by fire or by some accident fall upon them, earthquakes shake the very ground around them, yet they have lasted for seven hundred years from the time of Tarquinius Priscus almost uninjured, a monument of antiquity which ought to be the more carefully observed since it has been passed over in silence by some of our most celebrated historians.” The Tarquins are said to have compelled the Roman people to work at these huge structures, just as the kings of Egypt and Assyria exacted task-work from their subjects; but in palliation of the cruelties alleged against them by the historians it must be noted that in the one case buildings of permanent public service were built, while in the other, only the vanity of a despot was flattered. [Sidenote: Fortuna Virilis.]