Imaginary portrait of Tarquin the Superb in the Promptuary of the Medals of the Most Renowned Personages by Guillaume Rouillé, 1553. Year 509 BC. During the siege of Ardea, while banqueting with their cousin Lucius Collatinus, the sons of the king of Rome Tarquin the Superb decide to return to verify which of their wives is the most virtuous. Leaning wisely over her work, Lucretius, the wife of Collatinus, wins hands down, but inspires Sextus Tarquin with a guilty passion. The latter surreptitiously returns to Collatia and rapes the unfortunate woman who prefers suicide to dishonor, not without having made her relatives swear to drive the tyranny of the Superb out of Rome. Since this episode, the monarchy would have become odious to the Romans. But is Tarquin's reputation deserved? Nothing is less certain. During the VII th century BC. J.-C., Rome has become a city that arouses covetousness. Since the time of the kings of Latin-Sabin origin (Romulus, Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius and Ancus Marcius), the City, a natural crossroads between sea and mountains on the Tiber, but also between Etruria and Hellenized Campania, has prospered in particular thanks to the salt trade, present at the mouth of the Tiber, and its location as a stopover for navigators who cross the Tyrrhenian Sea. A condottiere at the head of Rome It was at the end of this century that a warlord named Tarquin the Elder, first an ally of the Roman king Ancus Marcius, overthrew the monarch and established his power in Rome. Of Corinthian origin by his father, Tarquin is of Etruscan mother (his Latin name Tarquinius means "that of the city of Tarquinia"). From this period and throughout the 6th th century BC. AD, Rome became the plaything of the Etruscan condottieri, adventurers leading their private armies of hoplites (heavy infantrymen equipped in the Greek style) through central Italy. Thus, the successor of Tarquin the Elder, whom tradition sought to latinize as Servius Tullius, is known to us through Etruscan sources. This is a Macstarna , in Latin a Magister , a warlord in the pay of the brothers Aulus and Caelius Vibenna, condottieri of the city of Vulci, who themselves may have reigned over Rome, having left their names to two of the city's hills, the Caelius and the Capitol . Tradition reports that around 534 BC. AD, Tarquin the Superb, who would be the son or more likely the grandson of Tarquin the Elder, first murdered his own brother, then married Tullia, the very daughter of Servius Tullius. This one would have helped him to overthrow his father, not hesitating to roll with his chariot over the body of the dying sovereign... Despite this original crime, the Superb made Rome the most powerful city in Italy, more powerful even than the Greek and Etruscan cities of the Peninsula. Under his reign, prodigies multiplied, like so many omens of the future greatness of the Rome of the Caesars. Thus a human head was exhumed in the building site of the great temple of Jupiter; reputed to be that of Aulus Vibenna, it gave its name to the place:caput (head) Auli , i.e. the "Capitol". The building activity of Tarquin the Superb completed the transformation of the city of hovels of yesteryear into a city of stone and brick surrounded by walls, with its paved Forum, its sewers (the Cloaca Maxima ), its great circus, its temples, its royal palace, its temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus , whose style was inspired by the then dominant Etruscan and Greek standards. Tarquin's reign has been comparedto archaic Greek tyrannies, which privileged the people over the aristocracy. Tarquin played the role of a tyrant in the Greek sense of the term, protector of the plebs against the aristocracy of the patricians, extending the work of his predecessor Servius Tullius. The latter had in fact weakened the power of the old local aristocracy, thanks to a political and military reform which dissociated the citizens from their ties of clientele with the rich families and organized the people into property and military categories. Relying on new executives in the Senate, Tarquin knew how to develop an official propaganda which, in the eyes of the plebs, made him a new Hercules, a civilizing hero venerated in Rome from the most remote times. Thus, it is a statue of Hercules in terracotta that adorned the Roman temple called "of Sant'Omobono". Dedicated to VI e av. J.-C. to Mater Matuta and Fortune, he was the perfect example of this propaganda already at work under the reign of Servius Tullius. Mater Matuta and Fortune embodied the very special destiny of the Etruscan condottieri:Servius Tullius had found in Tanaquil, wife of Tarquin the Elder, a protective mother, and Fortune embodied the incredible success of these adventurers forcing their destiny. Hate of the monarchy Rome then dominated the Latin cities of which, since Romulus, it had undertaken the progressive conquest. The Latins had always been politically bound by the League of Jupiter Latiar, located at the top of the Alban Mountains, which regulated political and religious relations. The Superb now summoned her to an assembly in the sacred grove of Lucus Ferentinae. There, under the aegis of the deity, questions of power were settled to Rome's advantage. Moreover, in the powerful Latin city of Gabies, lock of commercial communications with Campania and major cultural center of the Latins, Tarquin the Superb imposed by force the power of one of his sons. The excavations, on the very site of ancient Gabies, of a building recalling the layout of the regia (royal sanctuary) of Rome, would give substance to this tradition. Thus, Tarquin the Superb could have been the flamboyant figure of a great sovereign, the most powerful of all the kings of Rome. However, this is not the case. The reason lies in the rewriting of the legend of the character under the Republic, which gave rise to two essential motifs in Roman history, deeply rooted in political mentalities. The Romans rememberthat it was through crime that Tarquincame to kingship. The first is the refusal of the pursuit of the monarchy (adfectatio regni ):One does not covet supreme power in Rome. The Romans indeed remember that it was through crime that Tarquin achieved royalty, by committing a fratricide, then a parricide, by killing his father-in-law Servius Tullius. The second motive is hatred of the monarchy (odium regni ). It is this ideology which made Julius Caesar hesitate before the royal diadem and which prevented Augustus from having himself proclaimed king, in favor of the title of prince (the princeps designating the first of the senators). The Superb, it is said, overwhelmed the plebs with corvées to carry out his great works and exercised power with cruelty, without taking into account the opinion of the senators. It was then that the rape of the virtuous Lucretius provided Roman nationalism with the pretext for the revolution which was to carry off Etruscan tyranny. Collatinus and Lucius Junius, another cousin of the Tarquins nicknamed Brutus (brute, imbecile) because he feigned stupidity so as not to attract the wrath of the king, therefore swore to drive the infamous sovereign and his family out of Rome. Tarquin's name had become so odious that poor Tarquin Collatinus had to resign from the consulship which now replaced the monarchy. Why such relentlessness? We have here an authentic fable. Because the reversal of 509 BC. was in no way a national Roman uprising. Besides, the conspirators were Etruscans, and the institutions of the Republic did not issue all armed from the thigh of the revolution; it took several centuries for them to take their final form. It was a palace revolution, masking moreover, perhaps, the arrival of a new Etruscan adventurer named Porsenna. The latter, it is said, would have put himself at the service of the old fallen tyrant, but, touched by the heroic resistance of the Romans, would have refused to seize the city. Porsenna was indeed the "forgotten king", since the legend refused to recognize him taking the city, which undoubtedly took place. However, tradition, which already held in Tarquin the symbol of the bad king, made the condottiere a magnanimous figure. The black legend of Tarquin was bornunder the pen of the historians of the Republic. One can wonder about the reasons for such relentlessness on the figure of the one who was the most powerful king of Rome. The history of the City was definitively shaped by senatorial circles from the III th century BC. This story was to convey edifying motives, all of which contributed to the dark legend of Tarquin the Superb. The patriotic greatness of Rome had nothing to do with the rounds of condottieri vying for the city. She eliminated some of them (the Vibenna, Porsenna) and presented the fall of the Superb as the fruit of a national insurrection. Finally, senatorial circles could not leave intact the image of a king who had weakened the Senate. By constituting this black legend, they condemned a single figure and a system, the monarchy, while sparing the other kings, from Romulus to Servius Tullius, thus popularizing the idea of a progressive degeneration of royalty. The ideology of the Republic was therefore to darken the tyranny of Tarquin who, although undoubtedly loved by the plebs, became the archetype of the bad sovereign. So much so that, because his name was Brutus, even though he had no connection with the Brutus who drove out the last king of Rome, Caesar's adopted son was almost forced to carry out the plot of 44 BC. J.-C. to kill his father, become in the eyes of the senators the new Superb. Find out more • Tarquin the Proud, accursed king of the Etruscans, T. Camous, Payot, 2014.• The Origins of Rome, A. Grandazzi, PUF, coll. What do I know?, 2003.• The Etruscans, J.-P. Thuillier, Armand Colin, 2003. Timeline 616 BC. AD Tarquin the Elder usurps the throne from the descendants of the legitimate king Ancus Marcius; the Etruscan dynasty of the Tarquins comes to power in Rome. The only Etruscan king who did not belong to this family was Servius Tullius.534 BC. AD Tarquin the Superb, perhaps the grandson of Tarquin the Elder, seized power in Rome by dethroning Servius Tullius. He set up a form of tyranny close to that of contemporary Greek cities.509 BC. AD According to legend elaborated by later Latin historians, Tarquin the Superb was expelled from Rome by a rebellion that led to the establishment of a new government:the Roman Republic.499 BC. Battle of Lake Régille, near Rome (or in 496 BC). The Latin cities revolted against Rome, allies of Tarquin the Superb and led by Octavius Mamilius, are definitively defeated.495 BC. AD Tarquin goes into exile and dies at the court of the tyrant Aristodemus of Cumae. The fall of Etruscan royalty opens the way, in the nascent Republic, to a long conflict which will oppose for two centuries the patricians to the plebeians. Heroes of Rome In support of the dethroned king Tarquin the Superb, the king of Chiusi, Lars Porsenna, declared war on Rome and marched with his army to besiege the city. Roman historians, especially Livy, say that the resistance of the Romans was fierce, and they emphasize the exploits of certain defenders, such as Horatius Cocles, Mucius Scaevola or Clelia. Livy also asserts that these acts of courage impressed the Etruscan king to the point that he eventually opted for peace and withdrew from Rome. But other historians diverge from this version and claim that Porsenna, on the contrary, stormed the city and conquered it.
