Preface: This article was written in collaboration with ChatGPT.

According to traditional accounts, the event later known and repeatedly retold as the Lucretia affair occurred in 509 BCE.

The incident took place at the very end of Rome’s monarchical period, around 509 BCE. At the time, Rome was engaged in external warfare, and King Lucius Tarquinius Superbus and his sons were away with the army. In Roman traditional narratives, it was common for young aristocratic men to engage in conversations comparing the virtue of their wives. Such scenes are not rare in ancient historiography and are often used as narrative entry points for domestic moral episodes. In one such conversation, the king’s son Sextus Tarquinius was present, and someone mentioned that the noblewoman Lucretia was renowned for her chastity and diligence.

According to Livy, several aristocrats then rode back to the city at night and unexpectedly visited their homes to observe whether their wives were behaving properly. While most noblewomen were found feasting or resting, Lucretia alone was discovered still at home, spinning wool and managing household affairs. Not long afterward, Sextus Tarquinius returned alone to Lucretia’s house and, invoking his status as a prince, requested hospitality. Late at night, he entered Lucretia’s chamber and used force and explicit threats to compel her submission: if she resisted, he would kill her and fabricate the appearance that she had committed adultery with a slave, ensuring that she would bear an indelible disgrace even after death.

Afterward, Lucretia did not choose to conceal the crime. She immediately sent for her husband and her father and asked each to bring a trusted nobleman as a witness. Among those who arrived was Lucius Junius Brutus, who would later play a central role in the founding of the Republic. Before them all, Lucretia recounted the events in detail, clearly distinguishing between bodily coercion and moral innocence, emphasizing that she had not acted willingly. Yet within the ethical framework of the time, even coerced sexual violation was still regarded as a stain unbearable for the family. After finishing her account, she took her own life on the spot.

Lucretia’s body was not dealt with privately but was publicly displayed. News of her death spread rapidly among the aristocracy and was understood as evidence that royal power had violated the most fundamental boundary of the family. Ancient narratives are explicit on this point: the significance of the event does not lie in the fact that it was an act of sexual violence, but in that it occurred between the royal house and an aristocratic family, symbolizing a transgression of royal authority. In other words, within the narrative structure it functioned as a “threshold signal”: if even the most protected bodies and honor of core families could not be safeguarded, then no rule remained intact.

That same year, before Lucretia’s body, Lucius Junius Brutus publicly swore an oath calling for the expulsion of the king and his family. The oath is described as a public, collective, and irrevocable political act. Soon afterward, the aristocracy coordinated their actions swiftly. Tarquinius Superbus was declared expelled, the royal family was driven out of Rome, and the kingship was not preserved to await a successor. Later tradition fixed this year as 509 BCE and treated it as the symbolic beginning of the Roman Republic.

Thus, what followed was not a popular uprising but an elite-led institutional rupture. The key judgment was explicit: the problem was not “finding a better king,” but that the position of king itself had become incompatible with the existing capacities of the state. As long as the position existed, any successor would inevitably reassemble the same tools and push the system back into the same zone of instability. The only rational solution was to remove the position entirely, root and branch.

By the reigns of Lucius Tarquinius Priscus and Servius Tullius, Rome was no longer a tribal city but an early state with permanent construction projects, organized military mobilization, population registration, and a stratified political structure. Taxation, corvée labor, military service, and political qualification began to be managed systematically. The result of this phase was clear: state capacity had been built, but there was no braking mechanism. Power remained concentrated in the king—only now with stronger tools.

First came permanent public works. Earlier construction relied largely on one-time mobilization: once completed, maintenance depended on custom. The projects associated with the Tarquin period—traditionally exemplified by large-scale drainage and urban works—required long-term planning, continuous labor, stable resource inputs, and intergenerational maintenance. This meant the state, for the first time, required sustained organizational capacity: who worked, for how long, how they were supplied, and who supervised them. Construction transformed power from issuing commands into controlling processes. From then on, a ruler’s legitimacy depended less on prestige than on the ability to keep systems running.

Second was the institutionalization of military mobilization. Warfare ceased to be merely a temporary communal effort and became grounded in registration, grouping, rotation, and long-term service capacity. Military obligation became linked to census data and property stratification. For the first time, the state could answer: how many people could be mobilized, what level of equipment they possessed, and who bore which level of risk in war. The army thus ceased to be merely the king’s retinue and became a calculable state resource.

Third came population registration and a stratified political structure. The reforms attributed to Servius Tullius were not democratization but administrative rationalization: through censuses, property classes, and centuriate organization, society was broken down into manageable layers. Political qualification, military obligation, and public responsibility were systematically bound together. Identity shifted from “whose family you belong to” to “what function you can perform.” This step gave the state its first abstract view of society—it no longer needed to know individuals, only categories.

Fourth was the institutional binding of taxation, labor, and qualification. Once construction, the army, and population management were institutionalized, finance could no longer rely on spoils of war. Taxation, compulsory labor, and public obligations became the norm rather than the exception. More importantly, these obligations were tied to political status: you had a place because you were incorporated into this system. This was not an expansion of rights but a universalization of responsibility.

At this point, state capacity was complete: the ability to build, calculate, levy, mobilize, and sustain long-term operations. The problem lay precisely where you pointed—to the absence of a braking mechanism. These capacities remained concentrated in a single individual. Terms were unlimited, vetoes nonexistent, power irreversible. The stronger the tools, the greater the risk. Previously, a king’s failures might merely “anger people”; now, failure could “destroy the system.”

Thus, the danger of this phase did not lie in whether rulers were cruel, but in the fact that the state had become powerful enough to overwhelm society without any structural constraint. If the king wished, he could continue requisitioning, building, and mobilizing indefinitely, while society had no institutional means to make him stop. All restraints remained moral, customary, or personal—and these began to fail in the face of state-level power.

This is why Lucius Tarquinius Superbus became the critical threshold. Not because he was “worse,” but because he inherited a power structure that had fully become state-like yet had not been institutionally dismantled. Rome was forced, for the first time, to confront a modern question: once the state exists, who can safely occupy its center? Construction and requisition continued to expand without clear temporal limits. Judicial decisions no longer strictly followed ancestral custom but increasingly reflected royal will. By the late sixth century BCE, Roman elites realized that the mechanisms that once stabilized political action—consultation, religion, and custom—could no longer effectively limit how royal power was exercised.

After Lucretia’s death, her body was carried by her family into a public space. Present were her husband, her father, and several nobles, including Lucius Junius Brutus. Before the body, Brutus drew a dagger, raised it, and swore publicly. According to Livy, the oath pledged—roughly—that he would, by blood and steel, expel Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, his wife, children, and entire family; that no one would ever again be allowed to rule Rome as king; and that anyone who attempted to restore monarchy would be treated as an enemy.

After the oath, Brutus passed the dagger to the other nobles present, who in turn repeated the oath using similar wording. No dissenters were recorded. When the oath was complete, Lucretia’s body was removed from the house. The oath-takers then departed together into the city. At the time, Tarquinius Superbus and his sons were not in Rome. Aristocrats within the city began to assemble. Members of the Senate appeared in public spaces. That same year, Tarquinius Superbus was declared expelled, his family driven out of Rome, and no successor to the throne was appointed.

There was no power vacuum. On the contrary, the city immediately entered a phase of institutional reorganization. After Tarquinius Superbus was expelled, no new king was installed. The supreme administrative, military, and judicial functions formerly held by the king were temporarily handled by multiple aristocrats.

The earliest to assume these supreme responsibilities were Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus. Brutus came from the patrician Junius family. In traditional Roman accounts, during the late monarchy he had long appeared taciturn and politically marginal. After the king’s expulsion, Brutus began jointly handling Rome’s highest administrative and military affairs and became one of the first to hold this authority. Roman tradition lists him as one of the first consuls. In subsequent years, he continued to participate in military campaigns and, according to tradition, was killed in battle against supporters of the monarchy.

Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus came from the Tarquinius family and shared the same nomen as the expelled royal house. He was Lucretia’s husband and lived in Collatia, hence the name “Collatinus.” After Lucretia’s death, he appeared at the scene with her father and participated in the oath. Following the king’s expulsion, Collatinus jointly exercised Rome’s highest administrative and military authority with Brutus and was likewise counted among the earliest consuls. Shortly thereafter, however, because of his family name’s association with the expelled monarchy, Collatinus faced opposition, was required to resign, and left Rome. His position was then filled by another.

The two held office simultaneously, jointly commanding the army, presiding over city affairs, and issuing orders. At this stage, there was no fixed title for the office. In later practice, this arrangement—two individuals simultaneously holding supreme authority—was retained. Each term had a clear end, after which successors were appointed. This office later came to be known as the consulship.

During the same period, the Roman Senate continued to exist and to meet. Its membership did not change wholesale with the end of monarchy; senators were largely long-standing aristocrats. While consuls rotated frequently, the Senate’s membership remained continuous. Major affairs were often discussed in the Senate before being carried out, though the Senate itself did not issue executive commands. Meanwhile, the popular assemblies continued to be convened, primarily to select those who would hold supreme authority and to publicly proclaim and confirm major decisions. The assemblies did not handle daily administration; their role was concentrated in election and confirmation.

In the following years, these practices were repeatedly carried out: supreme authority was always held jointly by two individuals; terms ended and successors were appointed; the Senate maintained continuity; and the assemblies participated in elections and public ratification. By the early fifth century BCE, the title of “king” no longer appeared in Rome, with supreme administrative and military affairs entrusted to annually rotating officials while the Senate and popular assemblies continued to operate.

This year became the symbolic starting point of the Republic not because it ushered in greater morality or broader equality, but because it established a harsh and enduring bottom line: the state had become powerful enough to oppress society, and therefore no individual should ever again monopolize it. Rome’s pathological suspicion of “kingship” begins here, written into both its institutions and its collective memory.