The plebeian status of the Junia gens has also raised doubts about his position as a consul and the alleged initial patrician domination of the office.

Modern historians have challenged almost every part of the traditional story from Livy: Some of the leading dramatis personae – Lucretia, Brutus, Valerius Publicola, even Lars Porsenna – have been dismissed as figments of pure legend.

[11] The four men gathered the youth of Collatia, then went to Rome where Brutus, being at that time Tribunus Celerum, summoned the people to the forum and exhorted them to rise up against the king.

According to Livy, Brutus' first act after the expulsion of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus was to bring the people to swear an oath never to allow any man again to be king in Rome.

Later-day Romans attributed many institutions to Brutus, including: The new consuls also created a new office of rex sacrorum to carry out the religious duties that had previously been performed by the kings.

[18] During his consulship the royal family made an attempt to regain the throne, firstly by their ambassadors seeking to subvert a number of the leading Roman citizens in the Tarquinian conspiracy.

[19][20] Following this, he either forced his co-consul Collatinus to resign or otherwise had him removed – either because of enmity to his relationship to the Tarquins or due to his lack of harshness in punishing the conspirators – and then presided over the election of a suffect consul, Publius Valerius Poplicola.

[21] Tarquinius again sought to retake the throne soon after at the Battle of Silva Arsia, leading the forces of Tarquinii and Veii against the Roman army.

Lucius Junius Brutus is a leading character in Shakespeare's Rape of Lucrece, in Benjamin Britten's opera The Rape of Lucretia based on André Obey's play Le Viol de Lucrèce, and in Nathaniel Lee's Restoration tragedy, Lucius Junius Brutus; Father of his Country.

Before the Glorious Revolution, Nathaniel Lee's Lucius Junius Brutus was banned in December of 1680 for portraying the Whig cause (Protestantism, no royal prerogatives, encouragement to trade and industry, empire) as Roman republicanism.

Alongside the examples of Agamemnon and Jephthah, the tragic heroism of Brutus is presented in stark contrast to the faith of the Biblical figure, Abraham.

In The Mikado, the protagonist Nanki-poo refers to his father the Emperor as "the Lucius Junius Brutus of his race", for being willing to enforce his own law even if it means killing his son.

The memory of L. J. Brutus also had a profound impact on Italian patriots, including those who established the ill-fated short-lived Roman Republic in February 1849.

In 1789, at the dawn of the French Revolution, master painter Jacques-Louis David publicly exhibited his politically charged master-work, The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons, to great controversy.