The introduction of the Greek Demaratus into the Tarquin story has sometimes been regarded with extreme suspicion. For the late Professor Pelham it seems to have been a proof that Tarquin was merely Herodotus translated into Latin. He uses it as such in a handbook on Roman history[1227]. Even if only the literary records are considered Pelham’s inference if not unreasonable is certainly rash. The story of the voyage of Demaratus stands on quite a different footing from the long speech put by Dionysius into the mouth of Brutus, in which the founder of the Roman republic is made to quote the double kingship at Sparta as a precedent for the double consulship[1228]. [Sidenote: but there is nothing improbable about the narrative,] Brutus’ speech is palpable fiction. The Demaratus story on the other hand may indeed have been borrowed from that of Philip the son of Butacides, who in the last quarter of the sixth century fled from Croton “with his own trireme and a crew of his own employees[1229]” and sailed first to Cyrene and then with Dorieus the Spartan to Sicily, where they tried to establish a settlement but were killed by the Phoenicians and Egestaeans. But if on other and independent grounds we find reason for thinking that the story of Demaratus’ voyage in the seventh century[1230] is in the main outline historical, then we may reasonably find a confirmation of it in the well attested facts of Philip’s adventures in the century following, in the statement[1231] that Caere, the Southern neighbour of Tarquinii, contained a Greek element at the time of the Tarquins[1232], and further in the fact that Demaratus is made to quit Corinth at a time when we have the authority of Herodotus[1233] for believing that many prominent Corinthians were being driven to quit their city. The migration of the Tarquins from Tarquinii to Rome corresponds with the Etrusco-Carthaginian alliance against the Greeks of which the best remembered fact is the subsequent disaster that overtook the Phocaeans in Corsica in 536 B.C. When the Tarquins are banished from Rome they flee to the Greek city of Cumae, while the Romans who have banished them proceed to make an alliance with Carthage[1234]. All through the Tarquin narrative we may discern a strictly historical background that fully explains their comings and goings. The same may of course be said of countless heroes of modern historical romances. But in these historical romances the fictitious characters seldom play the leading political part that is played by the tyrant kings of the Tarquin dynasty.