Then Lucius plotted with the nobles, who hated the good king; and he joined himself to the sworn brotherhoods of the young nobles, in which they bound themselves to stand by each other in their deeds of violence and of oppression. When all was ready, he waited for the season of the harvest, when the commons, who loved the king, were in the fields getting in their corn. Then he went suddenly to the Forum with a band of armed men, and seated himself on the king’s throne before the doors of the senate house, where he was wont to judge the people. And they ran to the king, and told him that Lucius was sitting on his throne. Upon this the old man went in haste to the Forum, and when he saw Lucius, he asked him wherefore he had dared to sit on the king’s seat. And Lucius answered that it was his father’s throne, and that he had more right in it than Servius. Then he seized the old man, and threw him down the steps of the senate house to the ground; and he went into the senate house, and called together the senators, as if he were already king. Servius meanwhile arose, and began to make his way home to his house; but when he was come near to the Esquiline Hill, some whom Lucius had sent after him overtook him and slew him, and left him in his blood in the middle of the way. Then the wicked Tullia mounted her chariot, and drove into the Forum, nothing ashamed to go amidst the multitude of men, and she called Lucius out from the senate house, and said to him, “Hail to thee, King Tarquinius!” But Lucius bade her to go home; and as she was going home, the body of her father was lying in the way. The driver of the chariot stopped short, and showed to Tullia where her father lay in his blood. But she bade him drive on, for the furies of her wickedness were upon her, and the chariot rolled over the body; and she went to her home with her father’s blood upon the wheels of her chariot. Thus Lucius Tarquinius and the wicked Tullia reigned in the place of the good king Servius. LUCIUS TARQUINIUS THE TYRANT [Sidenote: [_ca._ 534-510 B.C.]]