Plutarch, a Greek writing around 100 AD, made Parallel Lives: paired biographies of Greeks and Romans, judged by character. This is Publicola, set beside Solon of Athens. The scene is early Rome in central Italy, just after the last kings were thrown out.

Publius Valerius helped drive out the Tarquins, Rome’s last kings, then lived so plainly that people named him Publicola, friend of the people. He feared his own power. He lowered the fasces — a bundle of rods that marked a magistrate’s right to punish — before the assembly, and took the axe out of them inside the city. Lars Porsenna marched from Etruria, roughly Tuscany, to put the kings back. Horatius held a bridge; Mucius burned his own hand in the king’s fire; Publicola fought and made laws until the Republic — Rome run by a senate and elected officials, not a king — had manners. He died so poor the city paid for the funeral.