Tarquinius Superbus- Roman FigureMortal"Last King of Rome"

The Last King

Servius Tullius was still speaking when Tarquin seized him, carried him from the Senate house, and hurled him down the steps. Servius stumbled into the street. Tarquin's men caught him there and cut him to pieces. His daughter Tullia, Tarquin's wife, drove her chariot through the road where her father's body lay. The street was afterward called the Vicus Sceleratus: the Street of Crime. Livy records that the wheels left tracks of blood. With Servius dead, Tarquin took the throne without election or consent, the seventh king of Rome and the last.

Reign of Tyranny

Tarquin ruled without the Senate. He executed or exiled prominent citizens, confiscated their property, and kept bodyguards at his side. He completed the great Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline, a project his father Tarquinius Priscus had begun. His conquest of Gabii showed his methods plainly. Livy tells that Tarquin sent his son Sextus into the city as a false defector. Sextus won the Gabians' trust, rose to command, and then handed the city to his father without a battle. When Tarquin's messenger asked what to do with Gabii's leading men, the king said nothing. He walked into his garden and struck the heads off the tallest poppies with his stick. The messenger understood.

The Sibylline Books

The Sibyl of Cumae came to Tarquin carrying nine books of prophecy and named an enormous price. Tarquin refused. She burned three and offered the remaining six at the same price. He refused again. She burned three more and held out the last three, still at the original price. Tarquin bought them. The books were deposited in the Temple of Jupiter and consulted in times of crisis for centuries, through the Republic and into the Empire.

The Fall of the Monarchy

During a siege at Ardea, Tarquin's sons and their kinsman Collatinus debated whose wife was most virtuous. They rode home to test the question. They found the princes' wives feasting. They found Lucretia alone, spinning wool by lamplight. Sextus Tarquinius remembered. He returned secretly, entered her chamber, and raped her at sword-point.

Lucretia summoned her husband and her father. She told them what Sextus had done, demanded they avenge her, and drove a dagger into her own chest. Lucius Junius Brutus, who had survived Tarquin's purges by feigning idiocy for years, pulled the blade from her body, held it up streaming with blood, and swore to drive the Tarquins from Rome. The people rose. The army abandoned the king. Tarquinius Superbus fled into exile in 509 BCE, and Rome made itself a republic.