Family tree, showing the royal family and two branchesĪlthough the story has been romanticized, it is certainly possible that the rape of Lucretia was the immediate cause of the expulsion of the Tarquinius family. We know that the playwright Accius (170-c.85) wrote a very popular Brutus, which treated the rape of Lucretia, her death, and the beginning of the republic. Lucretia's theatrical suicide strongly suggests that this story is ultimately derived from a fabula praetextata, a tragedy inspired by an event from Roman history. So, he and Collatinus became the first consuls of the Roman republic, the two magistrates who executed the decisions of the Senate. At that moment Brutus, who was among Collatinus' friends, swore that he would overthrow the monarchy. She told Collatinus what had happened, and before the men fully understood what she was doing, she had stabbed herself with a knife and died. In a state of shock, Lucretia sent a message to her husband, who arrived immediately, accompanied with some friends. Having seen Lucretia's virtue, Prince Sextus fell in love, returned to Rome, forced her to have intercourse with him, and went away. Livy does not tell what the men were discussing when they went back to the siege of Ardea. So they returned to Rome and discovered that only one woman behaved as expected, Lucretia. They decided to visit them unexpectedly and see if they were as virtuous as they thought. According to the historian Titus Livy (59 BCE - 17 CE), king Tarquin was besieging Ardea, a Latin town, and several noblemen were discussing the virtues of their wives. The story about Lucretia is not implausible, although it has been elaborated. (The Varronian chronology is discussed here.) According to the Roman scholar Varro, this happened in 509 BCE, but there are strong indications that it happened, in fact, four years later. The Tarquinians were expelled from the city and the Roman republic was founded. If we are to believe the unanimous Roman tradition, this caused one cousins, Lucius Junius Brutus, to launch an insurrection against the royal family. Tarquin's son Sextus raped a Roman noblewoman, Lucretia, the wife of Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, who was distantly related to the royal family.
The drop that made the cup run over, was a scandal in the royal family. The king's surname Superbus means something like "the haughty one" or "the Proud".
It seems that Tarquin behaved like an autocrat and did not consult the senators, who felt ignored. The heads of Rome's noble families had always been invited to give advise to the king their meeting was called the Senate. His domestic policy, however, was not so successful. The Latin cities recognized Roman leadership, and Tarquin added several towns to his kingdom. His kingdom was one of the most powerful in Italy: its capital had some 35,000 inhabitants, its territory was some 800 square kilometers, and its zone of influence stretched as far as Circeii and Terracina - 90 kilometers to the southeast. In the last quarter of the sixth century BCE, Rome was ruled by king Lucius Tarquinius Superbus or Tarquin the Proud, a descendant from an Etruscan family. Rome as monarchy The so-called Brutus, a bust from the second century BCE, long believed to be the founder of the Roman republic but in fact an ancestor of the emperor Augustus. Lucius Junius Brutus: the legendary founder of the Roman republic.
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