Tullia Minor- Roman FigureMortal

The Conspiracy

Tullia was daughter of Servius Tullius, the sixth king of Rome. Livy tells that she was first married to Arruns Tarquinius, a quiet man content with his position, while her sister Tullia Major was married to his brother Lucius, who was ambitious and ruthless. The pairings were wrong. Tullia Minor despised her husband's mildness, and she found in Lucius the partner her ambition demanded. According to Livy, the two conspired and murdered their respective spouses, then married each other.

With Lucius now her husband, Tullia turned her fury on her father. She taunted Lucius for his inaction, telling him that if he wanted to be king he should act like one rather than live as a private citizen under another man's rule. She reminded him that his father-in-law had seized the throne without the Senate's consent and could be unseated the same way. Livy records her words as relentless, goading Lucius until he began courting senators and calling in favors owed to his family.

The Street of Crime

The coup came in the Senate house. Lucius Tarquinius entered dressed in royal robes, seated himself on the king's throne, and summoned the senators to hear him. When Servius Tullius arrived and demanded to know what Tarquinius was doing, Tarquinius seized the old king and hurled him down the stone steps of the Curia. Servius, bleeding and dazed, tried to make his way home. Tarquinius's men caught him in the street and killed him.

Tullia drove her chariot to the Senate house to be the first to hail her husband as king. Livy says Tarquinius ordered her home, and as her driver turned into the street where Servius's body lay, he pulled up the horses in horror. Tullia commanded him to drive on. The wheels of her chariot rolled over her father's corpse, and she arrived home spattered with his blood. Romans afterward called the street the Vicus Sceleratus, the Street of Crime. The name outlasted the monarchy itself.