But when he did die unexpectedly the boys were still young, and also conveniently out of town. Marcius appointed him as the guardian of his sons, who he wanted to succeed him when he died. The talents of Priscus (and his fortune) soon brought him a good reputation in Rome, and he became friends with the king Ancius Marcius. As they entered the city an eagle stole Priscus’ hat, which Tanaquil insisted was a good omen.
His wife Tanaquil suggested to him that he move to Rome, which had no such laws at the time. He inherited a fortune but was blocked from public office because of his foreign heritage. He was half Etruscan and half Greek, born in Etruria. It was a city of migrants and a land of opportunity, which was exactly what brought Priscus there. Priscus was not a Roman, but then even at that point most people living in Rome weren’t. Tanaquil, as imagined by Domenico di Pace Beccafumi He was followed by a succession of equally legendary kings, until we come to the fifth king of Rome, Tarquin’s father (or possibly grandfather) Lucius Tarquinius Priscus. Who Romulus actually was, and how much of that early history is true, is a rabbit hole that we will avoid today. At that time Rome was a far cry from the “eternal city” it would become, but it had also moved on past the colony of escaped slaves and brigands that the legendary Romulus had founded sometime in the 8th century BCE. Tarquin was the seventh king of Rome, or so the remaining histories tell us. For the people of Rome, Tarquin the Proud was that shock. Ridding yourself of the disease of monarchy can take generations, but sometimes all it takes is a single sharp shock. Despite all of history teaching us that putting a single fallible person in charge of an entire country (or empire) is almost always a bad idea, people still want to elevate someone onto a pedestal and then bow to it. What a good idea.” Even in modern times, when we fool ourselves into thinking we’ve moved on from this, you still see a horrible tendency for people to abandon their responsibility for their own lives to someone “better” than them.
To quote the great Terry Pratchett, people always seem to have a “little blank spot in their heads where someone had written: Kings.
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