Plutarch's life of Publius Valerius, surnamed Poplicola ("people's friend"), the Roman noble who helped topple the last king and then, paired with Solon in the Parallel Lives, spent his consulships proving that a republic's founders must guard against looking like kings themselves.
Poplicola opens Plutarch's paired life of Publius Valerius, a Roman aristocrat descended from the Valerius who had once reconciled Romans and Sabines. Valerius joins Lucius Brutus in expelling King Tarquinius Superbus after the rape of Lucretia, but is passed over for the first consulship in favor of Tarquinius Collatinus, Lucretia's husband. He proves his loyalty when a royalist conspiracy is uncovered inside two noble households, the Aquillii and Vitellii — a plot exposed only because a household slave, Vindicius, overhears the conspirators swearing an oath over sacrificial blood and carries word to Valerius rather than to the compromised consuls.
The narrative then follows Valerius through the wars that followed the expulsion: Brutus's death fighting Tarquin's son in single combat, Valerius's own hesitant, self-correcting rise to sole power (and his dramatic demolition of his own house on the Velia after the people murmured that it looked too much like a king's palace), and his legislative program — appeal to the people against a consul's verdict, the right to kill an aspiring tyrant without trial, the treasury lodged in the Temple of Saturn rather than any private house. Interwoven are the war against Lars Porsenna of Clusium, the exploits of Horatius Cocles at the bridge and Mucius Scaevola's burned hand, and the diplomatic absorption of the Sabine noble Appius Clausus and five thousand of his households into the Roman citizen body. Poplicola dies after his fourth consulship, mourned by the women of Rome for a full year and buried at public expense within the city walls.
The Life matters historically less as a documentary record — much of it, especially the Porsenna and Horatius material, is patriotic legend already contested by the sources Plutarch cites — than as Plutarch's case study in how a republic's founding generation had to invent, almost from nothing, the visible signs that distinguish a leading citizen from a tyrant: lowering the fasces before the assembly, funding public business from a temple treasury instead of a private house, tearing down one's own overlarge home. Paired with Solon, whose reforms preceded Athenian democracy, Poplicola shows the same moderation applied at the founding moment of a different constitution, and gives Plutarch occasion for one of his most vivid meditations on the psychology of civic self-restraint.
“But Publicola rushed out to help before the gates, and joining battle by the river held out against the enemy pressing on him in great numbers, until, struck by severe wounds, he was carried off, borne on a litter, from the battle,”
— Poplicola
“He said that, having conquered his fear of Porsina, he was conquered by his virtue, and that out of gratitude he was revealing what he would not have confessed under compulsion.”
— Poplicola
“It escaped the notice of the many that he was not, as they supposed, making himself humble, but rather was cutting down and curtailing envy by this moderation, while adding to himself as much greatness of power as he seemed to be taking away from his authority”
— Poplicola
“For he wrote a law that anyone might, without trial, kill the man who sought to seize tyranny, and made the killer clean of murder, if he could produce proof of the wrongdoing.”
— Poplicola
“The women, coming together privately among themselves, mourned him for a full year in honored and emulated grief.”
— Poplicola
Poplicola was the Roman noble Publius Valerius, later surnamed Poplicola ("one who cares for the people") for the popular measures of his consulships. Plutarch pairs him with Solon because both men used moderation and self-restraint to shape a new constitutional order at its founding moment — Solon before Athenian democracy existed, Valerius immediately after Rome expelled its kings.
It was a plot by young Roman nobles, including sons of Brutus and nephews of Collatinus, to restore the exiled king Tarquinius by murder and secret correspondence. The conspirators swore an oath over a slaughtered man's blood in the house of the Aquillii, unaware a slave named Vindicius had hidden inside and overheard everything; his testimony to Valerius exposed the plot and led to the conspirators' execution.
After the people murmured that his house on the Velia, overlooking the Forum, looked too grand and kingly, Valerius had it demolished overnight rather than argue against the criticism, and the people later built him a more modest house on the site now occupied by the temple of Vica Pota.
During the war with Lars Porsenna, Horatius Cocles held the wooden bridge into Rome alone until it could be cut down behind him, then swam the river in his armor despite a spear wound. Shortly after, Gaius Mucius infiltrated Porsenna's camp to assassinate him, killed the wrong man by mistake, and held his own hand over a sacrificial fire without flinching to prove Roman resolve — earning the name Scaevola, "left-handed."
Vindicius was a household slave who overheard the royalist conspiracy and reported it to Valerius at great personal risk. As a reward, Valerius had him made the first freedman granted Roman citizenship, and Plutarch reports that the Latin term for manumission, "vindicta," was named after him.
Among the hostages given to Porsenna after the peace was a group of Roman maidens, one of whom, Cloelia, led (or rode) a daring swim back across the river to Rome. Poplicola, valuing good faith over the escape, sent them back to Porsenna, who was so impressed by the courage involved that he honored the girl responsible and eventually released the hostages and his army's plunder to Rome.
Plutarch himself flags many episodes as contested legend, noting rival versions of who rode the river crossing (Cloelia or Valeria) and how Horatius got his nickname. Modern scholarship treats much of the early Republic's founding narrative, including the Porsenna war's outcome, as patriotic tradition rather than verified history, though the constitutional measures attributed to Valerius reflect genuine early Roman institutions.
He died shortly after celebrating a triumph and completing his fourth consulship. The Roman people voted him a public funeral funded by a contribution from every citizen, and the women of Rome mourned him privately for a full year, an honor Plutarch says was unmatched.
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