It is impossible to believe that the ancient lays in their original form spoke of Damaratus as the father of L. Tarquinius: but Polybius must have found this account already extant in the Roman Annals; and it may also have occurred in Ennius; nay even in the later forms assumed by the old poem, when the stories of Zopyrus and Periander were woven into it. Such lays, even in the hands of learned bards, are perpetually altering their features, shifting and changing until they vanish away.

When Cypselus, the offspring of a marriage of disparagement, by uniting with the commons had overthrown the oligarchy at Corinth, and was taking vengeance on the persons who had aimed at his life, many of the Bacchiads fled, among the rest Damaratus. Commerce had not been esteemed disreputable among the Corinthian nobility; as a merchant, Damaratus had formed ties of friendship at Tarquinii; he settled there. He brought great wealth with him; the sculptors Euchir and Eugrammus, and Cleophantus the painter, accompanied him; and along with the fine arts of Greece he taught the Etruscans alphabetical writing. Renouncing his country for ever, he took an Etruscan wife, and to the sons whom she bare him, gave the names and education of their own land, together with the refinements of Greece.