Horace,Odesi 12. 33-6

Romulum post hos prius an quietumPompili regnum memorem an superbosTarquini fascis, dubito, an Catonisnobile letum.Ancient readers of this stanza perhaps usually took Tarquinius as being the last of Rome’s seven kings and Cato as the praetorian governor of Utica who died by his own hand after Julius Caesar’s defeat of the Senate’s forces at Thapsus in 49. Some found L. Tarquinius ‘Superbus’ unsuitable company for the other Roman worthies listed by Horace and suggested that L. Tarquinius ‘Priscus’, the fifth king, was meant. Richard Bentley created worry in modern readers by pointing out the oddity of Cato’s position in Horace’s list—after threeregesand before eight Republicanprincipes—and by arguing that Cato’s presence in a poem designed to compliment Julius Caesar’s adopted son was even odder. In a recent volume of this journal, A. Treloar defended Cato’s presence against the efforts of Bentley and others to extrude him by emendation and made a new suggestion about the identity of Tarquinius, namely that he was L. Tarquinius ‘Collatinus’, one of Brutus’ succession of colleagues in the first consulship. The issues which Treloar raised are interesting and will repay further discussion.