15.  There they found Lucre’tia, the wife of Collati’nus, not like the other women of her age, spending the time in ease and luxury, but spinning in the midst of her maids, and cheerfully portioning out their tasks.  Her modest beauty, and the easy reception she gave her husband and his friends, so charmed them all, that they unanimously gave her the preference, but kindled, in the breast of Sextus Tarquin’ius, a detestable passion, which occasioned the grossest insult and injury to Lucre’tia, who, detesting the light, and resolving to destroy herself for the crime of another, demanded her husband Collati’nus, and Spu’rius, her father, to come to her; an indelible disgrace having befallen the family. 16.  They instantly obeyed the summons, bringing with them Valerius, a kinsman of her father, and Junius Bru’tus, a reputed idiot, whose father Tarquin had murdered, and who had accidentally met the messenger by the way. 17.  Their arrival only served to increase Lucre’tia’s poignant anguish; they found her in a state of the deepest desperation, and vainly attempted to give her relief.  After passionately charging Sextus Tarquin’ius with the basest perfidy towards her husband and injury to herself, she drew a poinard from beneath her robe, and instantly plunging it into her bosom, expired without a groan. 18.  Struck with sorrow, pity, and indignation, Spu’rius and Collati’nus gave vent to their grief; but Bru’tus, drawing the poinard, reeking, from Lucre’tia’s wound, and lifting it up towards heaven, “Be witness, ye gods,” he cried, “that, from this moment, I proclaim myself the avenger of the chaste Lucretia’s cause; from this moment I profess myself the enemy of Tarquin and his wicked house; from henceforth this life, while life continues, shall be employed in opposition to tyranny, and for the happiness and freedom of my much-loved country.” 19.  A new amazement seized the hearers:  he, whom they had hitherto considered as an idiot, now appearing, in his real character, the friend of justice, and of Rome.  He told them, that tears and lamentations were unmanly, when vengeance called so loudly; and, delivering the poinard to the rest, imposed the same oath upon them which he himself had just taken.

20.  Ju’nius Brutus was the son of Marcus Ju’nius, who was put to death by Tarquin the Proud, and the grandson of Tarquin the elder.  He had received an excellent education from his father, and had, from nature, strong sense and an inflexible attachment to virtue; but knowing that Tarquin had murdered his father and his eldest brother, he counterfeited a fool, in order to escape the same danger, and thence obtained the surname of Bru’tus.  Tarquin, thinking his folly real, despised the man; and having possessed himself of his estate, kept him as an idiot in his house, merely with a view of making sport for his children.