Printer's ornament featuring a central mask flanked by symmetrical scrollwork, foliage, and grotesque figures.

TARQUINIA GENS The Tarquinian Clan.

Damaratus of Corinth, a man of great wealth and highly respected, was driven into exile by civil conflict and fled from Corinth to Tarquinii, where he established his fortune. Livy brings forward the cause of this exile in his first book. Cicero, however, in the fifth book of his Tusculan Disputations, and Dionysius in the third book of his Antiquities, write that Damaratus fled from Corinth because he could not bear the tyrant Cypselus; to which opinion Pliny, in the third chapter of his 35th book, seems to subscribe. He married a woman of the nobility in Tarquinii, born of the highest status, from whom he had two sons. He named one Arruns and the other Lucumo, according to the Etruscan custom. Arruns died while his father was still alive, and Damaratus the father followed shortly after, worn out by age, bodily illness, and the grief of his son's death. Lucumo, however, was instituted as the sole heir by his father, passing over the posthumous child. When he could not hold an honorable position among his own people, he set out for Rome with his entire household and his wife Tanaquil. Having changed his name, he wished to be called L. Tarquinius in place of Lucumo. He was then admitted into the order of Patricians and Senators by King Ancus and soon after was created King of the Romans. These are briefly the things that the ancients have handed down regarding the origin of the Tarquinian clan. However, there is great variety and disagreement in the opinions of those who have written the genealogy of the Tarquins. For Fabius Pictor calls Tarquinius Collatinus the son of Egerius. Dionysius contends he is the grandson. Likewise, Livy writes that Tarquinius Superbus was the son of Priscus and the grandson of Damaratus. Dionysius proves that he is the same, the grandson of Damaratus. I gladly agree with the Halicarnassian referring to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, an author of Roman history, in the judgment of very learned men, who is foremost in being good and religious. Whatever the truth may be, it is certainly apparent that there is an error in Pomponius the Jurisconsult IC Jurisconsult / Lawyer, who writes in the second book of the Digest on the origin of law: "Who lived in those times when Tarquinius Superbus, the son of Damaratus..." when he is his grandson, or, if we believe Livy and Dionysius, his great-grandson. Nor does the argument that Zasius—easily the prince of the jurisconsults of that age, whom Alciatus seems to support—writes, that the term "son" includes the "grandson," have any place in this context. For, to omit the fact that this is often not even true in Civil Law, who does not see that historical writing is entirely foreign to that kind of subtlety, in which a solid and explicit image of the matter is desired, and there can be no place for fictional or shadowed things?