It is said that Tarquin spent forty thousand pounds of silver
in building the foundations; but there is no private citizen in Rome at
the present day who could bear the expense of gilding the existing
temple, which cost more than twelve thousand talents. Its columns are of
Pentelic marble, exquisitely proportioned, which I myself saw at Athens;
but at Rome they were again cut and polished, by which process they did
not gain so much in gloss as they lost in symmetry, for they now appear
too slender. However, if any one who wonders at the expense of the
temple in the Capitol were to see the splendour of any one portico,
hall, or chamber in the house of Domitian, he would certainly be led to
parody that line of Epicharmus upon an extravagant fellow,
"Not good-natured, but possessed with the disease of giving,"
and would say that Domitian was not pious or admirable, but possessed
with the disease of building, and turned everything into bricks and
mortar, just as it is said Midas turned things into gold. So much for
this.
XVI. Tarquin, after the great battle in which his son was slain by
Brutus, took refuge at Clusium and begged Lars Porsena, the most
powerful king in Italy, to assist him. He was thought to be an
honourable and ambitious man, and promised his aid. First he sent an
embassy to Rome, ordering them to receive Tarquin; and when the Romans
refused to obey, he declared war against them, and telling them at what
place and time he would attack them, marched against them with a great
army.
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