The Timpson Lyceum · History of Rome – Titus Livius (2025)

Tarquinius Superbus, Last King of Rome – Lecture 8 (History of Rome)

Overview

Lucius Tarquinius Superbus — "Tarquin the Proud" — was the seventh and last king of Rome (traditionally 535–509 BC) and the third of the Etruscan kings. Son of Tarquinius Priscus, he took the throne by force, having his father-in-law Servius Tullius murdered and even refusing him burial. His reign became Rome's textbook portrait of tyranny: rule by decree and bodyguard, a Senate deliberately allowed to wither, judicial terror used to strip enemies of wealth and life, and the common people pressed into forced labor on his grand public works.

Abroad he was an effective and ruthless expander of Roman power — mastering the Latin League by treachery, defeating the Volsci, and taking Gabii through his son Sextus' infiltration. At home the accumulated resentment needed only a spark, and it came with the Rape of Lucretia by Sextus Tarquinius. Led by Lucius Junius Brutus, the outraged Romans expelled the king and his family in 509 BC and swore never again to tolerate a monarch. In place of the king they created two annually elected consuls, founding the Roman Republic — the constitutional turning point that shapes everything that follows.

Key Concepts

• Tarquinius Superbus — Seventh and last king (reigned c. 535–509 BC, traditionally 25 years). Son of Tarquinius Priscus and third Etruscan king. His cognomen Superbus ("the proud/arrogant") was an insult that became his name in history.
• Seizure of power — He murdered his predecessor and father-in-law Servius Tullius, took the throne without popular or senatorial sanction, and refused Servius burial — announcing that he would rule by force, not by law.
• Rule by terror — He killed disloyal senators and never replaced them, letting the Senate dwindle; kept a permanent bodyguard; governed by personal decree; and, as chief judge, used capital trials to eliminate rivals and confiscate their property, even in cases where custom demanded the Senate be consulted.
• Mastery of the Latins — He married his daughter to Octavius Mamilius of Tusculum, a Latin noble, to gain standing among the Latins, then dominated the Latin League.
• Turnus Herdonius — A Latin leader from Aricia who warned the others against Tarquin's ambitions. Tarquin had weapons secretly planted in his camp, framed him as a would-be assassin, and had him drowned in the spring of Ferentina under a hurdle weighted with stones — a demonstration killing that cowed the Latins into a treaty giving Rome command of the combined army.
• War with the Volsci — A successful campaign that captured the wealthy town of Suessa Pometia, whose plunder helped fund the building program.
• The capture of Gabii — Unable to storm the fortified Latin town, Tarquin used his son Sextus, who defected to Gabii, won its trust and army, then destroyed its leading men from within. The signal to do so was the famous poppy-heads message: Tarquin silently struck the heads off the tallest poppies in his garden, telling Sextus to eliminate the city's most prominent men.
• Public works — He completed his father's great projects: the Cloaca Maxima (Rome's main sewer), the Circus Maximus, and above all the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline. Running short of funds, he conscripted Roman citizens as laborers, doubling their felt burden.
• The Sibylline Books — The Sibyl of Cumae offered nine books of prophecy at a high price; Tarquin refused, she burned three and offered six at the same price, refused again, burned three more, and he finally bought the remaining three — consulted thereafter only in grave crises.
• The Rape of Lucretia — Sextus Tarquinius, inflamed by the virtue of Lucretia, wife of his kinsman Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, forced himself on her by threatening to stage a scene of adultery with a murdered slave. Lucretia summoned her husband and her father, each with a witness — Lucius Junius Brutus and Publius Valerius — told her story, exacted an oath of vengeance, and killed herself.
• Lucius Junius Brutus — The leader of the revolt. Over Lucretia's body he turned public grief into fury, first at Collatia, then at Rome, and finally in the army camped before Ardea, which went over to him en masse.
• Expulsion of the kings (509 BC) — Rome shut its gates to Tarquin, who fled into exile; Sextus fled to Gabii and was killed there. The monarchy ended, and Rome swore that anyone seeking to make himself king could be killed with impunity.
• The consulship — In place of the king, the Romans elected two consuls for one-year terms, splitting the royal power between colleagues who could check one another. Brutus and Collatinus were the first — the founding magistracy of the Republic.
• Legend vs. history — Livy's regal narrative preserves Roman tradition, but the tidy list of seven named kings across two and a half centuries is historically suspect, as the chronology below shows.

Worked Example

Why historians distrust the traditional king-list. Roman tradition packs exactly seven kings into the years from the founding to the Republic. Test whether that is chronologically plausible.

1. Span of the Regal Period. From the traditional founding in $753$ BC to the expulsion of the kings in $509$ BC:

$753 - 509 = 244 \text{ years.}$

1. Average reign under the tradition. Dividing the span across seven kings:

$\frac{244}{7} \approx 34.9 \text{ years per king.}$

1. Compare to a realistic benchmark. For successive, mostly elected (not hereditary) rulers — several of whom, by tradition, reached the throne as grown men and died violently — a typical reign runs closer to $20$ years. A sustained average of nearly $35$ years is implausibly long.

2. Estimate how many kings the span "should" hold. If reigns averaged about $20$ years, the $244$-year span would require

$\frac{244}{20} \approx 12 \text{ kings,}$

nearly double the seven that tradition names.

1. Interpret the gap. The shortfall points to a king-list that is either incomplete (rulers dropped or telescoped out of memory) or built on inflated reign-lengths stretched to fill a fixed span. The strain is worst at the start and end: three of the seven reigns (the two Tarquins plus Servius) alone are made to cover $616-509 = 107$ years, or about $35.7$ years each.

2. Conclusion. The names and deeds of the last kings may rest on genuine memory, but the precise dates and the clean count of seven are a later reconstruction, not reliable record. $\blacksquare$

Summary

• Tarquinius Superbus (c. 535–509 BC), Rome's seventh and last king, seized the throne by murdering Servius Tullius and ruled as a tyrant — by decree, bodyguard, and judicial terror.
• Abroad he was effective: he dominated the Latin League (destroying Turnus Herdonius), beat the Volsci, took Gabii through Sextus' treachery, and completed the Cloaca Maxima, Circus Maximus, and Temple of Jupiter.
• His downfall came from within: Sextus' Rape of Lucretia ignited a revolt led by Lucius Junius Brutus, and in 509 BC the kings were expelled for good.
• Rome replaced the king with two annually elected consuls, checking royal power by collegiality — the founding of the Republic.
• The traditional seven-king chronology is historically doubtful: $244$ years across seven reigns averages $\approx 34.9$ years each, far above the realistic $\sim 20$, implying the list is incomplete or its reigns inflated.