Founding of the Roman Republic
According to Roman tradition, the Republic was established in 509 BCE when Lucius Junius Brutus led a revolt that expelled the Etruscan king Tarquinius Superbus following the rape of the noblewoman Lucretia by the king's son. The monarchy was replaced by two annually elected consuls who held supreme civil and military power but could check each other — a constitutional innovation designed to prevent tyranny. The early Republic struggled with fierce conflict between the patrician aristocracy, which monopolized political offices and priesthoods, and the plebeian majority, who fought for legal recognition over the following two centuries in the Struggle of the Orders. The Republican system of mixed governance, balancing consular authority, senatorial deliberation, and popular assemblies, became Rome's defining political achievement and a model studied by later theorists from Polybius to Madison.
- Category: Political
