News of these transactions having reached the camp, when the king, alarmed at this sudden revolution, was proceeding to Rome to quell the disturbances, Brutus--for he had had notice of his approach--turned aside, to avoid meeting him; and much about the same time Brutus and Tarquinius arrived by different routes, the one at Ardea, the other at Rome. The gates were shut against Tarquin, and sentence of banishment declared against him; the camp welcomed with great joy the deliverer of the city, and the king's sons were expelled. Two of them followed their father, and went into exile to Caere, a city of Etruria. Sextus Tarquinius, who had gone to Gabii, as if to his own kingdom, was slain by the avengers of the old feuds, which he had stirred up against himself by his rapines and murders. Lucius Tarquinius Superbus reigned twenty-five years: the regal form of government lasted, from the building of the city to its deliverance, two hundred and forty-four years. Two consuls, Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, were elected by the prefect of at the comitia of centuries, according to the commentaries of Servius Tullius. [Footnote 1: Books I-III are based upon the translation by John Henry Freese, but in many places have been revised or retranslated by Duffield Osborne.] [Footnote 2: The king was originally the high priest, his office more sacerdotal than military: as such he would have the selection and appointment of the Vestal Virgins, the priestesses of Vesta, the hearth-goddess. Their chief duty was to keep the sacred fire burning ("the fire that burns for aye"), and to guard the relics in the Temple of Vesta. If convicted of unchastity they were buried alive.] [Footnote 3: Surely there is no lack of "historical criticism" here and on a subject where a Roman writer might be pardoned for some credulity.--D.O.] [Footnote 4: Livy ignores the more accepted and prettier tradition that this event took place where the sacred fig-tree originally stood, and that later it was miraculously transplanted to the comitium by Attius Navius, the famous augur, "That it might stand in the midst of the meetings of the Romans"--D.O.] [Footnote 5: According to Varro, Rome was founded B.C. 753; according to Cato, B.C. 751. Livy here derives Roma from Romulus, but this is rejected by modern etymologists; according to Mommsen the word means "stream-town," from its position on the Tiber.] [Footnote 6: The remarkable beauty of the white or mouse-coloured cattle of central Italy gives a touch of realism to this story.--D.O.] [Footnote 7: The introduction of the art of writing among the Romans was ascribed to Evander. The Roman alphabet was derived from the Greek, through the Grecian (Chalcidian) colony at Cumae.]