Tarquinia gens

[1][2][3][4] Demaratus settled at Tarquinii in Etruria, where he married an Etruscan noblewoman, and had two sons, Lucius and Arruns, who took the surname Tarquinius after the town of their birth.

Denied political advancement due to his father's foreign birth, Lucius, encouraged by his wife, Tanaquil, determined to settle at Rome, where he could hope to attain high station based solely on his merits.

He fell into the retinue of Ancus Marcius, the fourth Roman king, becoming his trusted advisor.

[10] It may be that Collatinus was granted patrician status on the overthrow of the Roman monarchy; but as he then accepted exile according to the demand of his colleague, Lucius Junius Brutus, the matter becomes academic, as there was no tradition of patrician Tarquinii at Rome in later times.

The nomen Tarquinius appears to be the Latin form of the Etruscan Tarchna, apparently the same as the Tarchunies named in one of the frescoes in the famous François Tomb at Vulci.

Sebastiano Ricci , Tarquin the Elder consulting Attius Navius (1690).
Family tree showing relations to Lucretia and Brutus
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema , Tarquinius Superbus (1867). The king suggests to his son, Sextus, how to bring the city of Gabii under his control, by silently lopping the heads off the tallest poppies in his garden.