The semilegendary founder of the Roman Republic, Lucius Junius Brutus overthrew the last king of Rome. After driving the monarch into exile, he put power in Rome into the hands of the Senate, the representative institution that would govern the city and its growing empire for the next five centuries.
The Roman Republic, in turn, would serve as a model for the authors of the United States Constitution. Inspired by ancient Rome, delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 named the upper house of the legislature the Senate.
According to Roman histories, however, the founder of the republic was far from an idealist. The revolt against the king of Rome began as a personal vendetta after one of the king’s sons raped one of Brutus’s relatives. The rape of Lucretia by Sextus Tarquinius was one of the most famous scandals in ancient Rome, as well as a turning point in the city’s history.
The Tarquins, an Etruscan noble family, had ruled Rome since shortly after its founding in 753 BC. At the time of Brutus, the throne was held by Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, or Tarquin the Proud. Tarquin had seized power by murdering his own father-in-law, Servius Tullius, in the first of many killings during his rule.
Brutus, a distant relative of the Tarquins, was originally an ally. But in about 509 BC, while away at war, he heard about the rape of Lucretia and rushed back to Rome. Believing that the family name had been dishonored, Lucretia committed suicide; Brutus supposedly grabbed the bloody dagger from her hand and vowed to overthrow the king.
After driving out the king, Brutus repulsed several attempts by the Tarquins to recapture Rome. According to legend, Brutus even executed his own two sons, Titus and Tiberius, after they joined a plot to restore the monarchy. He forced Roman citizens to take an oath never to accept a king; opposition to monarchy would later become a central part of the political self-identity of many Romans.
The death of Brutus, according to the Roman historian Titus Livius (c. 59 BC–AD 17), also known as Livy, occurred during a battle when he and one of the ex-king’s sons, Arruns Tarquinius, killed one another in one-on-one combat.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- According to Roman lore, Brutus passed his loathing of the monarchy on to his descendants. One of them was Marcus Junius Brutus (85–42 BC), one of the assassins of Julius Caesar (100–44 BC), who hoped to prevent Caesar from crowning himself king.
- Lucretia figures in several of Shakespeare’s plays and is the main character in The Rape of Lucrece, a narrative poem published in 1594.
- The name Senate, originally denoting a gathering of Roman noblemen, is derived from the Latin word senex—meaning “old man.” The Roman Senate remained in existence for more than a millennium but disbanded in the sixth century, after the collapse of the Roman Empire.
