CHAP. 13.—THE FIRST EQUESTRIAN STATUES PUBLICLY ERECTED AT ROME, AND IN HONOUR OF WHAT FEMALES STATUES WERE PUBLICLY ERECTED THERE.
Pedestrian statues have been, undoubtedly, for a long time in estimation at Rome: equestrian statues are, however, of considerable antiquity, and females even have participated in this honour; for the statue of Clælia is equestrian,1295 as if it had not been thought sufficient to have her clad in the toga; and this, although statues were not decreed to Lucretia, or to Brutus, who had expelled the kings, and through both of whom Clælia had been given as a hostage.1296 I should have thought that this statue, and that of Cocles, were the first that were erected at the public expense—for it is most likely that the statues of Attus and the Sibyl were erected by Tarquinius, and those of each of the other kings by themselves respectively—had not Piso stated that the statue of Clælia was erected by those who had been hostages with her, when they were given up by Porsena, as a mark of honour.
But Annius Fetialis1297 states, on the other hand, that the equestrian statue, which stood opposite the Temple of Jupiter Stator, in the vestibule of the house of Tarquinius Superbus, was that of Valeria,1298 the daughter of the consul Publicola; and that she was the only person that escaped and swam across the Tiber; the rest of the hostages that had been sent to Porsena having been destroyed by a stratagem of Tarquinius.