Fortunately, the Etruscans were not in the habit of destroying the cities they took: they occupied and made use of them. They seem to have used Rome to spread their influence over Latium: they built a temple of Jupiter on the Alban hill, the old centre of a Latin league: and there is strong evidence that they made Rome the head of another and later league, with a religious centre in a temple of Diana, who was not originally a Roman deity, on the Aventine hill overlooking the Tiber. All events in this Etruscan period are very dim and doubtful, but it looks as if the very loss of the line of defence had only given the conquered city a new lease of life, with a widened outlook and fresh opportunities. But was she to continue as an Etruscan city? The question reminds us of a crisis in our own history: was England to become a Norman-French country after the Conquest? At this time it seems that the Etruscans were being harassed from the north by Gallic tribes, who had already spread over northwest Europe, and were conquering the valley of the Po and pressing farther south. This may account for the undoubted fact that about the end of the sixth century B.C. Rome did succeed in throwing off the Etruscan yoke: that the old Roman families united to expel their foreign king, and to establish an aristocratic republic. Henceforward the very name of king (_rex_) was held in abhorrence by the Romans, and the government passed into the hands of two yearly elected magistrates, with absolute power as leaders in war, and a limited power within the city. In the next chapter I will explain this new form of government more fully: here it will be enough to say that they were called consuls, and that they had an advising body (as the kings probably had before them) of the heads of noble families, called _senatus_, or a body of elderly men. At present let us go on with the story of Rome’s advance in Italy.