Tarquin the Proud, the Rape of Lucretia, and the Fall of the Kings
The fall of the Roman monarchy is one of antiquity's most resonant political narratives. Tarquinius Superbus came to power by murdering his predecessor, Servius Tullius. He ruled without consulting the Senate, executed senators on his own authority, and built his prestige through foreign conquest while alienating the Roman aristocracy. The precipitating event was the rape of Lucretia by Sextus Tarquinius. Returning to her husband and father, Lucretia told them what had happened, extracted their oaths of vengeance, and killed herself. Her death transformed a private crime into a public political crisis. Lucius Junius Brutus, who had spent years at the Tarquin court playing the fool to avoid the fate of relatives killed by the king, now revealed himself. He displayed Lucretia's body in the Roman Forum, called an assembly, and delivered a speech cataloguing Tarquin's tyrannies. The king was voted into exile. Brutus and Lucretius were elected the first two consuls. The consulship — two magistrates of equal power, each able to veto the other, serving for one year — was designed precisely to prevent the concentration of power that had made Tarquin's tyranny possible. Shakespeare dramatised it in The Rape of Lucrece (1594). Rembrandt painted her death.
- Year: 509 BCE
- Category: Political
