Ancient Rome · 509 BCE (traditional date)
How Did the Roman Republic Begin?
In short
- Livy's story says the rape of Lucretia led Brutus to expel Tarquin the Proud around 509 BCE.
- Rome replaced its king with two consuls who held power for one year and could block each other.
- The tale is legend shaped by later writers, but a treaty and an inscription suggest the change from kings to magistrates was real.
A woman sits with her father and her husband, a knife hidden in her clothes. She tells them what the king's son has done to her, makes them swear to avenge her, and stabs herself. In Roman memory, that knife ended the monarchy.
A wager in the king's camp
Livy sets the story around 509 BCE. Rome's seventh king, Tarquin the Proud, was besieging the town of Ardea, and the young nobles in his camp were bored. Over wine, they argued about whose wife was the most virtuous, and rode home that night to settle it by surprise.
The princes' wives were found feasting. Lucretia, wife of the nobleman Collatinus, was found late at night spinning wool among her maids. She won the contest. The king's son, Sextus Tarquinius, decided he would have her.
The knife and the oath
Days later Sextus returned as a guest and raped Lucretia, threatening that if she resisted he would kill her and leave a murdered slave beside her, so that she would be remembered as an adulteress. Afterwards she sent for her father and her husband. She told them everything, demanded vengeance, and killed herself.
With them was Lucius Junius Brutus, the king's own nephew. He had survived Tarquin's purges by playing the fool; “Brutus” means “dullard”. Now he pulled the knife from Lucretia's body and swore that no one would ever again be king in Rome.
Two consuls instead of a king
Brutus displayed Lucretia's body in public, raised armed men and roused Rome. The city's gates were shut against Tarquin, who went into exile. In place of a king, the Romans elected two consuls: Brutus and Collatinus.
The design was deliberate. Each consul held the king's full power of command, but only for one year, and each could block the other. Livy remarked that liberty began less from cutting royal power than from making it annual. A council of elders, the Senate, advised them, and its advice was rarely ignored.
Hatred of the word rex, “king”, ran deep. Collatinus, a Tarquin by birth, was soon pressed to resign and leave the city. Only a priest, the “king of sacred rites”, kept the old title, and he was barred from politics.
A father as judge
The new order was tested almost at once. Young aristocrats plotted to bring the Tarquins back, and among them were Brutus's own sons. As consul, Brutus sat in judgment and watched them flogged and beheaded.
Later Romans told the story as a lesson that the Republic came before family. When Jacques-Louis David painted Brutus brooding over his sons' bodies for the Paris Salon of 1789, in the first summer of the French Revolution, viewers read it as a political statement.
Legend or history?
Livy wrote nearly five centuries after these events, and his Lucretia is a moral tale about chastity and tyranny. Yet the outline has support. The Greek historian Polybius quotes a treaty between Rome and Carthage dated to the year of Lucius Junius Brutus and Marcus Horatius, “the first consuls”. An inscribed stone from the Forum, carved in the 6th century BCE, contains the word recei, “to the king”.
Not everything fits. The historian Tacitus hints that the Etruscan king Lars Porsenna actually captured Rome soon afterwards, a defeat Livy turned into heroic defiance. And the date sits suspiciously close to Athens' expulsion of its tyrants in 510 BCE. Most historians accept that Rome replaced its kings with yearly magistrates around 500 BCE; the details are much harder to trust.
In their own words
“By this blood, most chaste until a prince wronged it, I swear, and I take you, gods, to witness, that I will pursue Lucius Tarquinius Superbus and his wicked wife and all his children, with sword, with fire, aye with whatsoever violence I may; and that I will suffer neither them nor any other to be king in Rome!”
Livy, History of Rome (Ab Urbe Condita) 1.59.1, late 1st century BCE
Translation after B. O. Foster (Loeb Classical Library). Livy composed this speech nearly five centuries after the events; it shows how Romans of Augustus's day imagined the moment, not what Brutus actually said.
Why it happened
- Tarquin the Proud ruled harshly; by tradition he killed leading men and forced citizens to labour on his building projects.
- Rome's aristocrats resented a king who could override them.
- In Livy's telling, the crime against Lucretia turned that resentment into revolt.
What happened next
- Power was split between two consuls elected every year and advised by the Senate.
- Plebeians fought for a share of power; in 494 BCE they won their own officials, the tribunes of the plebs. Read the story →
- Polybius dates Rome's first treaty with Carthage, its future rival, to the Republic's first year. Read the story →
- Hatred of kings became a Roman reflex that Caesar's killers would invoke in 44 BCE. Read the story →
Why it still matters
San Marino, a tiny republic surrounded by Italy, still elects two Captains Regent who share the role of head of state for six months at a time. It is a living version of the idea Romans dated to 509 BCE: never give one person the top job, and never give it for long.
Key people
- Lucius Junius Brutus
- The king's nephew, who led the revolt and became one of the first two consuls
- Lucretia
- Roman noblewoman whose rape and suicide, in Livy's account, triggered the revolt
- Tarquin the Proud
- Seventh and last king of Rome, expelled around 509 BCE
- Sextus Tarquinius
- The king's son, whose crime the tradition blames for the fall of the monarchy
- Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus
- Lucretia's husband and Brutus's first colleague as consul, forced out because he was a Tarquin
Key terms
- Consul
- One of two chief magistrates elected each year; each held supreme command and could block the other.
- Senate
- Council of elders, later of former magistrates, whose advice carried great authority even though it could not pass laws.
- Imperium
- The power to command armies and enforce the law, once the king's, now held by consuls for a year.
- Fasces
- Bundles of rods, with an axe outside the city, carried by attendants called lictors as a sign of a magistrate's power to punish.
- Res publica
- Literally “the public thing”: the Romans' name for their state, and the origin of the word “republic”.
Test yourself
What did Romans take the name “Brutus” to mean?
- Dullard
- Avenger
- Lion-heart
- Truthful
Show the answer
Dullard. Livy says Lucius Junius Brutus pretended to be slow-witted so that the suspicious king would not see him as a threat, and the nickname Brutus, “dullard”, stuck.
The full lesson in the app ends with 5 questions like this one.
Connected stories
- The Founding of Rome: Legend and Evidence: The monarchy founded, in legend, by Romulus ends with the seventh king.
- The Ides of March: Marcus Brutus, Caesar's assassin, claimed descent from the Brutus who drove out the kings.
- The Gracchi and the Crisis of the Republic: The tribunes of the plebs, created in the early Republic's struggles, became the Gracchi's weapon.
Frequently asked questions
Why did the Romans overthrow their king?
Tarquin the Proud ruled harshly; by tradition he killed leading men and forced citizens to labour on his building projects. Rome's aristocrats resented a king who could override them. In Livy's telling, the crime against Lucretia turned that resentment into revolt.
How was the early Roman Republic governed?
Power was split between two consuls elected every year and advised by the Senate. Plebeians fought for a share of power; in 494 BCE they won their own officials, the tribunes of the plebs. Polybius dates Rome's first treaty with Carthage, its future rival, to the Republic's first year. Hatred of kings became a Roman reflex that Caesar's killers would invoke in 44 BCE.
What did Romans take the name “Brutus” to mean?
Dullard. Livy says Lucius Junius Brutus pretended to be slow-witted so that the suspicious king would not see him as a threat, and the nickname Brutus, “dullard”, stuck.
What is the main primary source for “The Birth of the Republic”?
Livy, History of Rome (Ab Urbe Condita) 1.59.1 (late 1st century BCE). Translation after B. O. Foster (Loeb Classical Library). Livy composed this speech nearly five centuries after the events; it shows how Romans of Augustus's day imagined the moment, not what Brutus actually said.
Sources
- Livy, History of Rome (Ab Urbe Condita) 1.56–1.60 and 2.1–2.5
- Polybius, Histories 3.22 (the first treaty between Rome and Carthage)
- T. J. Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000–264 BC) (1995)
- Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (2015)
Images are credited under each picture. Paintings and photographs come from public collections via Wikimedia Commons; scenes with no surviving image are marked as illustrations.
