Traditionally, the history of Rome begins with its founding by Romulus, a descendant of the exiled Trojan Aeneas, and the establishment of a monarchy under which seven kings succeeded one another. The last of these was Tarquinius Superbus the Proud, who was overthrown in the 6th century BCE after his son assaulted a patrician woman named Lucretia, sparking an insurrection led by Lucius Junius Brutus that established a republic governed by two consuls. However, most historians consider these events to be little more than a mythical narrative, constructed later to fit a particular origin story.

This may seem somewhat surprising, perhaps even perplexing, given the number of literary and artistic works inspired by Tarquin’s dethronement throughout history, from Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece to Voltaire’s Brutus and Lays of Ancient Rome by Babington, as well as countless paintings on the theme by artists such as Cranach, Titian, and Rubens, or the lasting legacy of Brutus’s name in anti-monarchical contexts like the French Revolution or the American War of Independence.

But the fact is that the documentary sources that have traditionally told the story of Tarquin’s downfall are today regarded as unreliable, either in whole or in part, despite echoing a prior oral narrative likely passed down to the people through theatrical representations. Indeed, most of the authors who narrated it were chronologically much later, and experts generally agree that they intended to reconstruct this episode as a reference to their own time, using each other’s works as models.

Roman republic origin
Origin of the Roman Republic, painting by Casto Plasencia (1877), in the Prado Museum. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

The quintessential classical text is Ab urbe condita (commonly retitled History of Rome from Its Foundation), written by Livy as late as the last quarter of the 1st century BCE and displaying a distinctly pro-Roman and pro-aristocratic republican bias. Other authors, such as Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who wrote Roman Antiquities to link the Romans with the Greeks, display similarly uncritical approaches to their sources.

The list of ancient historians who wrote about the overthrow of the monarchy extends to Plutarch, Dio Cassius, Diodorus Siculus, and several lesser-known authors. The historian closest in time to the events — living in the 3rd century BCE — was Quintus Fabius Pictor, considered the first Roman historian, a conscientious analyst, and an inspiration to later writers. Still, it would not be fair to accuse these early historians of deliberate manipulation, as they lacked reliable sources from before the 4th century BCE.

By the time Fabius Pictor wrote his work (presumably titled Deeds of the Romans, referenced only by other sources), the narrative of the monarchy’s overthrow had already been established, not as something entirely original but as a story incorporating common elements typical of such cases: a corrupt ruler, sexual violence against virtuous young women, an honorable leader who leads a popular uprising to change the regime in favor of a nobler system… Fabius Pictor likely adhered to a specific Greek model — the fall of the Pisistratid dynasty — which bore a resemblance to the story of Lucretia and Tarquin.

Roman republic origin
Tarquinius Superbus in priestly functions, a work by Lawrence Alma-Taderna. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

This story recounts how Hipparchus, tyrant of Athens, attempted to seduce Harmodius, who rebuffed him due to his relationship with Aristogeiton. Spurned, Hipparchus invited Harmodius’s younger sister to participate as a kanephoros in the Panathenaic festival, only to reject her on the grounds that she was not a virgin (an essential condition), thus humiliating her family. Aristogeiton and Harmodius avenged their honor by killing Hipparchus, though they lost their own lives in the process. Hipparchus’s brother and successor, Hippias, managed to suppress the ensuing revolt but ultimately fell due to the intervention of Spartan troops under Cleomenes I, and Cleisthenes later established a democracy.

There is a clear parallel with the offense suffered by Lucretia, the role of Brutus, and the establishment of the Roman Republic. Another possible source of inspiration could be the story of King Darius I’s attempt to restore Hippias to the throne (who had taken refuge in Persia after his fall), just as Tarquin never ceased in his efforts to regain Rome. Some moments of that attempt may have also been inspired by Greek events; for example, the stand of Horatius Cocles on a bridge against Lars Porsenna’s army, or the divine intervention of Castor and Pollux to aid the Romans against the Latin League.

This has led to questions regarding the historicity of Rome’s seven kings. Archaeology has demonstrated that there was a monarchy; whether all its rulers actually existed or some were later literary creations is another matter. In fact, Tarquin’s figure is considered plausible, albeit surrounded by a series of less credible elements. Some are even contradictory, such as the fact that the republican leaders were actually relatives of the sovereign and therefore could have been candidates to succeed him in what may have simply been an attempted usurpation.

Roman republic origin
The Sons of Tarquin Admiring the Virtue of Lucretia, by Jean-Jacques Lagrenée. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

The early moments of the republic are also strange, with consuls appearing in some sources but not in others, and some deliberately reordered to fit a specific legal context. This is why they do not match the Fasti Capitolini, that is, the list of the main magistrates of the Roman Republic, which was one of the most important classical sources for chronology. It is still considered valid—after all, there isn’t an alternative—as long as it is subject to critical review, at least for certain phases.

And one of these, of course, is the beginning. Some believe that the Fasti were manipulated by inserting Etruscan names, removing plebeians, and extending dates so that the birth of the republic would coincide with the dating of the Capitoline temple, an emblematic site associated with republican times but actually older, perhaps linked to the introduction of eponymous magistrates (those who gave their names to the year), who already existed during the monarchy as a reflection of the Spartan ephors. According to this hypothesis, the establishment of the republic was gradual and several years before the commonly established date, around 472 B.C.

This is why there are also speculations about the possibility that the fall of the monarchical institution between 505 B.C. and 509 B.C. did not occur as dramatically and explosively as the stories narrate, but through a series of events that Roman historians compressed and which were set within the ritual known as Rex Sacrorum. He was a senatorial priest who, along with the Pontifex Maximus (who appointed him) and the Flamines Maiores, led the religious hierarchy. His wife also held the dignity of Regina Sacrorum and had her own ceremonial duties.

Roman republic origin
Detail of the preserved Fasti Capitolini in the Roman Palazzo dei Conservatori. Credit: José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro / Wikimedia Commons

The functions of the Rex Sacrorum were not political or military but religious, inherited from those previously exercised by the king. The debate is whether this figure—or figures, as there was another titled Rex Nemorensis who tended the sacred grove of Diana and accessed the position by ritually assassinating his predecessor—was created during the nascent republic or already existed in monarchical times, having gradually assumed royal functions. It has not been proven one way or the other.

In sum, current researchers are divided between those who accept the traditional historiographic explanation, subjecting it to criticism and discarding overly fictitious details while preserving its general lines, and those who believe that Rome’s history was not only constructed as a falsification of the past but that the Romans themselves were aware of it. The former, led by the British Tim Cornell, believe that Rome was engulfed in a period of changes that affected many states in the Tyrrhenian Italian region, with the spark that led to the monarchy’s overthrow arising in such a context and influencing surrounding situations.

Thus, the Etruscans of Lars Porsenna attacked Rome at Tarquin’s request or simply for expansion, though the archaeological record in certain parts of the city associated with the crown at that time (the royal sanctuary where the church of Sant’Omobono stands today, the Comitium area…) shows particularly intense destruction that suggests theorizing about an intensified anti-monarchical animosity in which the oligarchy would have overthrown that institution to then yield power to the army, represented by two members of the Comitia Centuriata (a new version of the Assembly, the main legislative body, which included the election of the king among its functions).

Roman republic origin
Lars Porsenna as he appeared in the 16th century work Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

In the first phase of this process, the oligarchs would have reduced the monarch’s powers to transfer them to the Rex Sacrorum, who would have been of royal blood at that time. This would not have occurred in Tarquin’s reign but rather before, in that of Servius Tullius, who ruled as a popular lifetime magistrate, exercising more as a tyrant—in the ancient sense of the word—than as a king. It is even possible that his name derived from this position (he was called Mastarna, an Etruscan corruption of the Latin magister, considering that one of the dictator’s titles was magister populi).

The transition from a dictatorship to a bi-consular system is thus easier to imagine, especially if we consider that other Latin cities underwent a similar process; this was the case with Alba Longa, for example, which, before being destroyed, replaced its king with two annually elected dictators. However, some historians highlight the role played by Lars Porsenna in establishing a republic in Rome. This is not a new idea since tradition says it was he who, after conquering the city, abolished the monarchy and undertook expansion through Latium, though his defeat at Aricia made him abandon those plans and let the Romans defend their republic on their own.

Pliny the Elder believed that Porsenna was king of Rome for a time; in any case, the fall of the monarchy and the republican advent coincided with the decline of Etruscan influence in central Italy. This hypothesis would explain the appointment of Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, both with royal blood (the former was a nephew of Tarquinius Superbus and the latter, the widower of Lucretia). Such kinship would have led Porsenna to leave them in charge of Rome, seeking a combination of legitimacy and stability, though they eventually became consuls.

Roman republic origin
Brutus, Collatinus and Lucretia on a panel of 1490, school of Roberti and Giovan Francesco Maineri. Credit: Sailko / Wikimedia Commons

Opposing this positive, albeit nuanced, view of traditional historiographic sources is one that considers them a product of molding and adaptation to the ideology prevailing at the time they were written. They were based on lists of official positions that included ancestors of illustrious families who were meant to be exalted, with their order alternated until the chronology became confusing and contradictory. For example, Timaeus of Tauromenium, author of a history of the Greeks in the Western Mediterranean that included Rome, placed the origin of the republic in 509 B.C. simply because that was the year Cleisthenes established democracy in Athens.

Likewise, Livy, in his Ab urbe condita, structured Roman history as a cyclical succession in which a stage of moral virtue is followed by one of decadence. The first cycle would begin with Romulus and reach its peak with Servius Tullius before closing with Marcus Furius Camillus (a military figure who achieved four triumphs, served as dictator five times, and was six times a tribune with consular powers, receiving the title of Second Founder of Rome upon his death). The next cycle would be in the era of Scipio Africanus, culminating in Augustus. It is also inevitable to see what Mary Beard calls retrospective prophecy about Brutus, the ancestor of the namesake who would kill Julius Caesar four centuries later.

In short, the story of the overthrow of the Roman monarchy and the establishment of the republic did not happen exactly as it has been told. It is true that this is not a new idea since all peoples have created their foundational myths, and what we have recounted here could be extended to many other cases: the classical conception of Covadonga and the Reconquista to establish the new Asturian kingdom, the Jewish Exodus that led the chosen people to their new land, the destruction of codices and rewriting of their past by the Mexica to align it with their acquired status as the dominant power in the Valley of Anáhuac, etc.

This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on September 25, 2023: La discutida historicidad del derrocamiento de la monarquía romana y el nacimiento de la república

SOURCES

Sergei Ivanovich Kovaliov, Historia de Roma

Mary Beard, SPQR. Una historia d ela Antigua Roma

Javier Cabrero Piquero y Pilar Fernández Uriel, Historia Antigua II. El mundo Clásico. Historia de Roma

Pierre Grimal, El mundo mediterráneo en la Edad Antigua. El helenismo y el auge de Roma

Tim Cornell, The beginnings of Rome. Italy and Rome from the Bronza Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 bC)

Gary Forsythe, A critical history of early Rome: from prehistory to the first Punic War

Wikipedia, Overthrow of the Roman monarchy

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