BRUTUS, Lucius Junius, a Roman patriot, sometimes called the Elder, to distinguish him from Marcus Junius, the slayer of Caesar, lived about 500 B.C. According to the legend, he was the son of Marcus Junius and the elder daugh ter of Tarquin the Proud, the last king of Rome, and is represented as having saved his life from the cruelty of that prince by feigning idiocy, whence he received the surname of Brutus (Stupid). Yet the King associated him with his own sons, Aruns and Titus, in a mis sion which he sent to Delphi to inquire into the meaning of a portent, which had caused much alarm at Rome. After receiving the reply to the question they were charged to propound, the young men enquired of the oracle which of the three should be king of Rome, no one of them being, it is observable, heir to that dignity. To this the reply was, *Whichever shall first kiss his mother.* So, on their return to Italy, Titus and Aruns ran to kiss the Queen mother; but Lucius Junius, as he landed from the galley, pretending to slip, fell prostrate and kissed the soil of Rome, in the belief- that by *mother" the oracle had meant mother earth. When Lucretia, the wife of Collatinus, plunged a dagger into her bosom that she might not outlive the insult which she had suffered from Sextus, the son of Tar quin, Brutus is said to have drawn the dag ger from the wound, and to have sworn ven geance against the Tarquins whose banishment he then demanded and procured. Then (about
509 ac.) he is said to have been chosen one of the two first consuls. According to the legend, a conspiracy to restore the monarchy having been supported by the two sons of Brutus, he, after the crime had been proved, ordered the lictors to execute the law, and did not leave the assembly till after the execution. At length Tarquin marched against Rome. The consuls advanced to meet him. Brutus led the cavalry; Aruns, son of Tarquin, commanded the body opposed to him. They pierced each other with their spears at the same moment, and both fell. The Romans conquered, and Brutus was buried with great splendor. The details of the story of Brutus, which may be regarded as a poetical legend, have been shown by Niebuhr to be irre concilable with history. Consult Bondurant, Junius Brutus Albinus' (Chicago 1907).