Lucius Tarquinius Superbus - Overthrow of Servius Tullius

Overthrow of Servius Tullius

Tullia continued to encourage Tarquin to increase his own position. In time, she convinced him to attempt to usurp the throne. Tarquin began to solicit the support of the patrician senators, especially those families who had been given senatorial rank by his father. He bestowed presents upon them, and to them he criticised the king Servius Tullius.

In time, Tarquin felt ready to seize the throne. He went to the Senate-house with a group of armed men, sat himself on the throne, and summoned the senators to attend upon King Tarquin. He then spoke to the senators, criticising Servius: for being a slave born of a slave; for failing to be elected by the Senate and the people during an interregnum, as had been the tradition for the election of kings of Rome; for being gifted the throne by a woman; for favouring the lower classes of Rome over the wealthy and for taking the land of the upper classes for distribution to the poor; and for instituting the census so that the wealth of the upper classes might be exposed in order to excite popular envy.

Immediately afterward, Servius Tullius was murdered in the streets of Rome by a group of men sent by Tarquin, possibly on the advice of Tullia. Tullia then drove in her chariot to the senate house, where she hailed her husband as king. He ordered her to return home, away from the tumult. She drove along the Cyprian street, where the king had been murdered, and turned towards the Orbian Hill, in the direction of the Esquiline Hill. There she encountered her father's body and, on a street later to become known as wicked street because of her actions, she drove her chariot over her father's body. Livy also says that she took a part of her father's body, and his blood, and returned with it to her own and her husband's household gods, and that by the end of her journey she was, herself, covered in the blood.