How did Servius Tullius die?
27951#20
When Servius Tullius arrived at the senate-house to defend his position, Tarquinius threw him down the steps and Servius was murdered in the street by Tarquin's men. Soon after, Tullia drove her chariot over her father's body. For Livy, Tarquinius' impious refusal to permit his father-in-law's burial earned him the sobriquet "Superbus" (“arrogant” or “proud”), and Servius' death is a "tragic crime" ("tragicum scelus"), a dark episode in Rome's history and just cause for the abolition of the monarchy. Servius thus becomes the last of Rome's benevolent kings; the place of this outrage – which Livy seems to suggest as a crossroads – is known thereafter as "Vicus Sceleratus" (street of shame, infamy or crime). His murder is parricide, the worst of all crimes. This morally justifies Tarquin's eventual expulsion and the abolition of Rome's aberrant, "un-Roman" monarchy. Livy's Republic is partly founded on the achievements and death of Rome's last benevolent king.
Servius Tullius
2881974#6
Tarquin's daughter married Servius Tullius, who succeeded him as the sixth king of Rome. After a long and prosperous reign, Tullius was deposed by his own son-in-law, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the son or grandson of the elder Tarquin. An Etruscan legend told of how Servius, aided by the heroes Aulus and Caelius Vibenna, had defeated and killed a group of enemies, including a certain Gnaeus Tarquinius of Rome, perhaps the son of Tarquin the Elder and father of Tarquin the Proud.
Demaratus of Corinth
27951#19
In Livy's history, Servius Tullius had two daughters, Tullia the Elder and Tullia the Younger. He arranged their marriage to the two sons of his predecessor, Lucius Tarquinius and Arruns Tarquinius. The younger Tullia and Lucius Tarquinius Priscus procured the murders of their respective siblings, married, and conspired to remove Servius Tullius. Tullia encouraged Lucius Tarquinius to secretly persuade or bribe senators, and Tarquinius went to the senate-house with a group of armed men. Then he summoned the senators and gave a speech 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; for taking the land of the upper classes for distribution to the poor; and for instituting the census, which exposed the wealthy upper classes to popular envy.
Servius Tullius
27951#0
Servius Tullius was the legendary sixth king of Rome, and the second of its Etruscan dynasty. He reigned 575–535 BC. Roman and Greek sources describe his servile origins and later marriage to a daughter of Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, Rome's first Etruscan king, who was assassinated in 579 BC. Servius is said to have been the first Roman king to accede without election by the Senate, having gained the throne by popular support; and the first to be elected by the Senate alone, without reference to the people.
Servius Tullius
29265446#2
Livy also records that one of the leading men of Corniculum, named Servius Tullius, was slain in the capture of the town, and that his pregnant wife was taken captive to Rome, but was exempted from slavery by the Roman queen Tanaquil on account of her rank, and was given a place in the king's household. She gave birth to a son, Servius Tullius, who later married Tarqunius' daughter, and succeeded him as king of Rome.
Corniculum (ancient Latin town)
18046#13
Most ancient writers regarded Tarquin as the father of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the seventh and last King of Rome, but some stated that the younger Tarquin was his grandson. As the younger Tarquin died about 496 BC, more than eighty years after Tarquinius Priscus, chronology seems to support the latter tradition. An Etruscan legend related by the emperor Claudius equates Servius Tullius with "Macstarna" (apparently the Etruscan equivalent of the Latin "magister"), a companion of the Etruscan heroes Aulus and Caelius Vibenna, who helped free the brothers from captivity, slaying their captors, including a Roman named Gnaeus Tarquinius. This episode is depicted in a fresco at the tomb of the Etruscan Saties family at Vulci, now known as the François Tomb. This tradition suggests that perhaps the sons of the elder Tarquin attempted to seize power, but were defeated by the regent, Servius Tullius, and his companions; Tullius would then have attempted to end the dynastic struggle by marrying his daughters to the grandsons of Tarquinius Priscus. However, this plan ultimately failed, as Tullius was himself assassinated at the instigation of his son-in-law, who succeeded him.
Lucius Tarquinius Priscus
249374#4
Tanaquil also played a role in the rise of Servius Tullius, the sixth king of Rome. Raising him as her own child, Tanaquil believed Servius would be the next successor to the throne. Her dreams would be realized when, one day Servius was sleeping and his head was surrounded with flames. The fires danced around his head without hurting him and when Servius awoke, the fire disappeared. Taking this as an omen, Tanaquil knew Servius would one day be king. When Tarquin was assassinated, Tanaquil hid his death from her subjects, instead telling them that Tarquin had been wounded and had Servius himself appointed regent until he got better. After gaining the people's respect and commanding the kingship, Servius and Tanaquil announced Tarquin's death. The Senate named Servius king and Tanaquil's son, Arruns Tarquinius, married Servius' daughter, Tullia.
Tanaquil
27951#4
Before its establishment as a Republic, Rome was ruled by kings (Latin "reges", singular "rex"). In Roman tradition, Rome's founder Romulus was the first. Servius Tullius was the sixth, and his successor Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud) was the last. The nature of Roman kingship is unclear; most Roman kings were elected by the senate, as to a lifetime magistracy, but some claimed succession through dynastic or divine right. Some were native Romans, others were foreign. Later Romans had a complex ideological relationship with this distant past. In Republican mores and institutions kingship was abhorrent; and remained so, in name at least, during the Empire. On the one hand, Romulus was held to have brought Rome into being more-or-less at a stroke, so complete and purely Roman in its essentials that any acceptable change or reform thereafter must be clothed as restoration. On the other, Romans of the Republic and Empire saw each king as contributing in some distinctive and novel way to the city's fabric and territories, or its social, military, religious, legal or political institutions. Servius Tullius has been described as Rome's "second founder", "the most complex and enigmatic" of all its kings, and a kind of "proto-Republican magistrate".
Servius Tullius
47210#24
Dionysius of Halicarnassus recounts a local story regarding the birth of king Servius Tullius. In it, a phallus rose from the hearth of Vesta in Numa's palace, and Ocresia was the first to see it. She immediately informed the king and queen. King Tarquinius, upon hearing this, was astonished; but Tanaquil, whose knowledge of divination was well-known, told him it was a blessing that a birth by the hearth's phallus and a mortal woman would produce superior offspring. The king then chose Ocresia to have intercourse with it, for she had seen it first. During which either Vulcan, or the tutelary deity of the house, appeared to her. After disappearing, she conceived and delivered Tullius. This story of his birth could be based off his name as Servius would euphemistically mean "son of servant", because his mother was a handmaiden.
Vesta (mythology)
27951#9
Early in his reign, Servius warred against Veii and the Etruscans. He is said to have shown valour in the campaign, and to have routed a great army of the enemy. His success helped him to cement his position at Rome. According to the "Fasti Triumphales", Servius celebrated three triumphs over the Etruscans, including on 25 November 571 BC and 25 May 567 BC (the date of the third triumph is not legible on the "Fasti").
Servius Tullius