Overthrow of the Roman monarchy
Despite a number of attempts by Lucius Tarquinius Superbus to reinstate the monarchy, the Roman people are successful in establishing a republic and thereafter elected two consuls annually to rule the city.
Resolution of this topic is difficult, however, due to the absolute paucity of reliable sources such that – as the historian Fred Drogula remarks – "we have no way to prove or disprove most of the information contained [in the fasti]".
Archaeological evidence indicates there were kings in Rome;[12] but most scholars do not believe that the traditional narrative is historical,[13] ascribing its characters and details to later literary invention.
[24][27] Tarquin then appeals to his son-in-law, Octavius Mamilius of Tusculum, who mobilises the Latin League against Rome, until they too are defeated at the Battle of Lake Regillus (with the Romans receiving divine assistance from Castor and Pollux).
[24][29] The Roman government then falls into the hands of a group of aristocratic families, the patricians, who then elect magistrates from among their number, setting up conditions for the so-called Conflict of the Orders.
[31] Barthold Georg Niebuhr, in the early nineteenth century, posited that the oral tradition may have been transmitted by poems sung or recited by bards at banquets during the republic.
While this "ballad theory" is no longer widely accepted,[32] T. P. Wiseman has more recently argued that the stories were transmitted by means of public performance of plays dramatising historical events.
Such plays would be especially important in a society with low literacy, and are perhaps supported by archaeological evidence suggesting circulation of Greek myths and stories in Italy as far back as the archaic period.
[35] Similarly, Few can now doubt that earlier times tended, both consciously and unconsciously, to be re-created by a succession of Roman writers in light of the conditions in the third and second century.
[48] Moreover, sexual violence against innocent and virtuous young women was a common trope characterising tyrants and bad kings in ancient literature.
[48] The historian Tim Cornell makes the point that "as a dynastic history[,] the bare catalogue of events within the Tarquin family is, in itself, perfectly credible".
[54] Polybius asserts that a treaty signed in the first year of the republic was dated to the consulship of Brutus and Horatius, even though the two, according to Livy and Dionysius, never held office at the same time.
[28] Cassius Dio – according to a quote in Zonaras – dissents from the consular tradition entirely, saying that Brutus initially ruled alone but was given a colleague to prevent him from declaring himself king.
[59] The semi-traditionalist approach is built on a methodology of accepting Roman tradition as correct in terms of broad events, but discarding the narrative details themselves as fictitious.
This story also has the added benefit of being supported by a Dionysius of Halicarnassus' history of Aristodemus of Cumae which confirms a defeat of Lars Porsenna and a date of 504 BC for the battle of Aricia from a separate Greek historical tradition.
[61] Cornell argues that the abandonment of the site at Sant'Omobono "contributes to the general impression... of an oligarchic coup against a populist tyranny" which was then forced to concede power to the army represented in the comitia centuriata.
[69] Accepting the tradition – specifically in Tacitus and Pliny the Elder[70] – that Porsenna was successful in capturing Rome, he either abolishes the monarchy directly or puts the existing king to flight.
But after the Etruscan defeat at the Battle of Aricia in 504 BC, Porsenna is forced to withdraw and leave the Romans to face Latin attempts to restore Tarquin as king.
[71] If this theory is true, it also would explain the appointment of Brutus and Collatinus: Porsenna would want to install someone to govern the city and members of the former royal house would lend legitimacy to his occupation and a co-equal pair would check against abuses.
[72] This theory could also be plausibly combined with Cornell's semi-traditionalist account above, by proposing that Porsenna's intervention was opportunistically related to Rome's overthrow of its monarchy and the resulting unstable power struggle.
[51] There is also substantial archaeological evidence of destruction in central Etruria around at the end of the sixth century, suggesting major inter-state conflict, making the use of military force, even without an internal Roman political crisis, plausible.
[76] This hypothesis, proposed by Krister Hanell, argues that the fasti have nothing to do with the republic at all, which in his view emerged gradually when royal power faded away into the hands of the eponymous magistrates who became the consuls.
[80] Cornell rejects all of these views as overly revisionist and dependent on a "a complex mixture of archaeological and literary data" while having strong assumptions about the changes that the expulsion of the kings created.
Timaeus performed "artificial numerological exercises" which provided a chronology onto which dimly remembered oral stories, like that of the expulsion of the kings, could be placed.
[95] The story of his overthrow was also referenced by the public as part of a campaign to convince one of his descendants, Marcus Junius Brutus, to organise the assassination of Julius Caesar.
[96] Praise of Brutus, both the one who expelled the kings and the one who killed Caesar, was common during the French Revolution; the name was appropriated as an exemplar of civic republican virtues and citizenship.
[100] In the ancient world, the playwright Lucius Accius composed a tragedy depicting the events of the overthrow, titled Brutus, that combined elements from Greek myth and tragic dramas with the Roman story.
[101] His play Macbeth also borrowed elements from the ancient stories of Tarquin's fall: Attilio Mastrocinque argues Macduff, Malcolm, and Siward of Northumbria are modelled on Brutus, Lucretius, Collatinus, and Poplicola.
[102] Nathaniel Lee, an English playwright, dramatised the story of Lucretia and the overthrow of the Tarquins in a late 17th century play, Lucius Junius Brutus.
